Her and Me
by Tierfal
Summary: Hermione Granger will take pity on a hapless Draco Malfoy the day Hell freezes over.  Draco is lacing up his ice skates.
1. A Painfully Normal Day

_Author's Note: Light, fluffy, and fun are the keywords here. The weird thing is, I haven't been trying to be light, fluffy, and fun in any of my fics until now. It goes against my nature. Or something. Whatever; I'm going to shut up now._

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Chapter One

A Painfully Normal Day

It was on an utterly mundane Wednesday evening that Hermione Granger's painstakingly orderly, painfully normal life went straight to Hell.

Absently she chewed on a cuticle as she skimmed the letter. It was another complaint, which wasn't surprising, given that they were all complaints, because that was her job, but this particular specimen was getting on her nerves. Not only was it petulant and petty, it was badly-worded and defied the tenets of basic grammar. If there was _one_ thing Hermione Granger hated, it was—

"Hello, love."

—Draco Malfoy.

…_DRACO MALFOY?!_

She blinked three times, but he persisted in existing there, lounging idly against her desk, grinning down at her like he knew something she didn't. Maybe he did. No, _probably_ he did.

"M…alfoy?" she hazarded. He was wearing a white button-up shirt, gray slacks, and the same complacent grin he'd paraded around in all through school. His hair was on the short side and a little ragged, as if he had directed the barber to make it appear that he'd cut it himself, but he was still quite unmistakably Draco Malfoy.

His smirk widened at her miserable excuse for a greeting, and he shot off a quick salute. "In the flesh," he confirmed. He paused and pursed exquisite lips. "I take your blank expression and enduring silence as signs that you're too happy to see me to speak."

"Good observations, wrong conclusion," she fired back, finding her tongue. She looked at him more keenly through narrowed eyes. "What are you doing here, Malfoy?"

"Please," he drawled, planting his hands on the edge of her desk and leaning forward, his wide, flawless smile glinting in the weak fluorescent light. "Call me Draco."

Flatly now, she repeated, "What are you doing here—_Malfoy_?"

By the time she placed the emphasis on the surname, he had been distracted by the name placard on her desk.

"Hey, look at this," he urged. He picked it up and put his fingers over some of the letters. "'Ermine Range,'" he read contentedly. "A place where weasels can roam happily over hills and dales and start little weasel families." Delightedly he grinned, as if he'd just stumbled upon a treasure trove. "Hey, sounds like a certain Weasley family I know."

Fighting down a slightly-appalled smile wasn't easy, but she did it, the better to give him a pointedly bored look. "I'm only going to ask you one more time," she cautioned. "What are you doing here?"

Malfoy smiled the way a cat would smile at a cornered mouse. It was disconcerting. And kind of… hot.

Hermione wanted to smash her face down on her desk, but she managed to refrain from so doing as Malfoy started to speak in that same dreadfully calm voice, turning her name plate over in his hands.

"Isn't is obvious, Mo Ran?" he inquired, blotting out a few different letters with long, pale fingers. "You're rebuilding the Ministry, and I am supremely good at delegating. Sounds like a natural fit to me."

Hermione stared at him. "You're asking me for a job," she summarized.

His smarmy smile sufficed.

"You've lost it," she informed him. "If you really think I'm going to stick my neck out for _you_—"

Restlessly his fingertips fluttered over the letters of her name. His light, light eyes followed their unceasing movement intently. "I don't expect you to put your career on the line for me," he responded, utterly unperturbed even now. "I'd be stupid to ask for that kind of a favor. All I need is a place of refuge until I can get back on my feet. They've been… pulled out from under me by the ankles at the moment, to complete a rather mediocre metaphor." He smiled down at the letters he was manipulating. "There's still a few Death Eaters you lot didn't round up, and they're not so happy with the Boy Who Defected."

Hermione's battered fingernails, bitten most of the way to the quick, drummed on the desktop.

"What is it?" Malfoy prompted.

"You're asking if you can stay with me."

Malfoy grinned his cat grin. "Oh, but _no_," he scoffed, unable to keep that satisfied smirk off his face. "Never _that_. My dear, that would be _terribly_ pretentious."

"Which never stopped you," she rejoined.

Graciously he bowed, sweeping the hand holding the name placard behind his back. "Your humble servant, One Anger."

"'Servant' I doubt," she remarked. "'Humble' I know for sure is inaccurate."

There was a long pause, during which Draco Malfoy looked down at the name plate and then slowly set it down on the desk. Sure fingers arranged it just so, perfectly aligned with the edge of the desktop. Slowly his gaze rose to meet hers.

"I," he said quietly, a slightly cowed sort of smile toying with his lips now, "will mold myself to whatever adjective you choose now, Hermione Granger. I'm running out of places to hide."

_Just a few days couldn't hurt, _she thought,_ while he gets back on his feet—_

_WHAT?_ another part of her brain interrupted abruptly—apparently a more intelligent part. _Are you INSANE?_

"Draco," she said, half-laughing, half-apologizing, "I just—"

_You just called him "Draco," is what you just did,_ her brain muttered.

"I…can't," she finished lamely.

"Can't take in a man who's got nowhere left to go?" he supplied, surprisingly lightly, looking without seeing at the gray panels of the ceiling. "Can't help someone who can't help himself anymore? Can't take in a man you don't trust?" He smiled, sadly and somewhat bitterly. "I shouldn't talk like that. I understand—no, I really do. I can't just waltz in here thinking you'll put everything on the line to—"

"Fine!" Hermione heard herself cry out. Heads turned, and colleagues stared. She felt blood burst up into her cheeks with a vengeance.

It was Draco's turn to blink bewilderedly. "What?" he asked. It was the least articulate thing he'd said since stepping up to her desk.

Plastering on a There's-Nothing-to-See-Here-Folks smile, Hermione nodded at all the people who had turned to look before facing Draco—no, _Malfoy_; Malfoy, not Draco—again.

"I said, 'Fine,'" she repeated, quietly now. "As in, 'Fine; I've lost my bloody mind, and I'm inviting my old arch-nemesis to come stay in my apartment for an undetermined period of time.'"

There was a new smile on his face, a new tool from his great box of them. This one was… different. Small, gentle, and almost innocent. "Then," he replied, "thank you."

She looked at him for a moment. Then she struggled with her purse and managed to wrangle out a few clinking coins. "Here," she told him abruptly, pushing them into his palm. "I get off in—" She glanced at the clock. "—ten minutes. There's a new ice cream shop just down the street. Go grab yourself something, and I'll meet you there."

"What…" Malfoy was grinning again. "Don't trust me with the keys?"

Hermione Granger smiled thinly. "Wouldn't trust you with my laundry, Malfoy."

"Good," Malfoy replied crisply. "I wouldn't, either. You should see what happened to my white underwear."

Feeling a fiery blush climbing her cheeks again, Hermione pressed her lips together, willing them not to betray her and smile. "I don't want to know _anything_ about your underwear, thank you."

There was a lightness to Malfoy's smile that was somehow refreshing. "Damn that red sock," he remarked. "Damn it to Hell." He shrugged and directed that knee-weakening smile at her, full-blast. "Enough stalling. I'm off."

He spun on his heel and strolled away, plunging his hands into his pockets, the coins jingling merrily. Hermione caught herself looking at his rear through his gray slacks, stifled a squeak, and focused hard on the latest whiny letter, rubbing her cheeks in a vain attempt to cool them down.

Bloody Draco Malfoy.

Yes, it was a painfully, painfully, _painfully_ normal day.

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_  
Author__'s Note Again: Sorry to implement an ANA, but since_ _you__'ve gotten this far, I wanted to let you know how this fic is going to work._ _I__'ve written the whole thing already._ _It's twenty chapters. I will do my best to update twice a week, so that Mondays suck less and Fridays rock more. Tell your friends (or… don't…that might be weird…). Huzzah!_

_Grammatically yours,  
__Tierfal_


	2. Ice Cream Soup

_Author's Note: Chapter Two, as promised._

_Sorry if it seems like I, or perhaps Draco, or perhaps both of us, have A.D.D. when you are reading this chapter. If you read slowly, it mostly makes sense._

* * *

Chapter Two

Ice Cream Soup

Draco was slouching attractively in the blindingly bright silver chair facing away from the street when he detected Hermione's clicking footsteps. He'd caught a few glimpses of her heels as she'd been spinning this way and that in her rolling chair while he peppered her with a small armada of verbal weapons, and he had taken note. Thought it might come in handy. You never knew what snippet of information might save your sorry—gorgeous, but nonetheless sorry—ass.

Deliberately he made a tremendous point of dragging his tongue over the curve of his plastic spoon. Let her get _that_ image stuck in her head.

She sat down opposite him primly and waited. He glanced up at her. No, she hadn't spread her petals and blossomed into a startlingly beautiful rose of a woman. Even after the extra ten minutes. You'd think a girl could do a lot in ten minutes if she put her mind to it. Maybe she'd actually spent the time, you know, _working_.

Nah.

Hermione Granger was still more of a wildflower than a rose—all right as far as looks went, a little unorthodox, and a bit more interesting than just _the usual_. Passable. If she was letting him into her home on little more than a plea bolstered by a guilt trip, more than passable.

"I'd be obliged if you'd keep a lookout for me," he remarked, licking an invisible drop of chocolate ice cream from his spoon. He was partly joking—and partly not.

An arched eyebrow lifted. Somehow she understood the nuances of his statement instantaneously, synthesizing both the facetious tone of his voice and the utter solemnity of the wand lying within easy reach in his lap. "What should I look for?"

"Anyone who gives me more than a passing glance."

Her head tilted. "Like those four fifteen-year-old girls giggling uncontrollably at you from that table to your left?"

Draco felt the old grin resurrected and tugging at his lips. "Especially them. They're deeply suspicious. You have my express permission to hex them into oblivion."

Hermione eyed the waxy paper cup that held the soupy remains of his ice cream. _Mmm,_ Draco thought. _Ice cream soup. _"Are you done with that?" she wanted to know. "I like to get home before it gets too dark."

"Why?" Draco inquired, grinning languidly. "Worried someone will mug you, Ms. Premiere Witch of the Current Age?"

"Paralyzed with fear," she rejoined sarcastically, getting to her feet. "Are you coming?"

"But of course," he acquiesced graciously, gathering his wand in one hand and his faded bag in the other.

She looked at the latter item. "That's all you have?"

He tried to make his smile as cryptic as possible. Judging by the confusion on her face, he succeeded.

No, wait. That wasn't confusion. It was skepticism.

"Very mysterious," she remarked, once again sarcastically.

Draco sniffed and drew himself up taller. "Thank you. I pride myself on my esoteric enigmatic…ness."

Hermione smiled amusedly.

_You wish,_ Draco thought. It wasn't amusement. It was patronization. _Damn_ that woman.

"Ten points awarded for the alliteration," Hermione noted, undoing the gate and releasing them from the shop patio into the street. "Five of those points deducted for having to coin a word to make it."

"Enigmaticness is a word," Draco replied automatically.

"Not a chance," Hermione responded smoothly, starting off down the charming cobblestone street.

Charming as _roadkill_, maybe.

"Why don't we just Apparate?" he asked.

Faintly Hermione smirked. "There's this thing, Mister Malfoy," she said. "It's very new-fangled and exciting. Does wonderful things for you. It's called _exercise_."

_I am a MALFOY,_ Draco thought indignantly. _I have no need for your petty peasant cures to ills like obesity. My exceptional breeding exempts me from such pitiful futilities!_

But he didn't say that. He _did_ need that place to stay, after all.

Maybe he should work a little harder on ingratiating himself, come to think of it.

"Your hair," he said in his best Erudite Poet impression, "is the same glorious shade as that transcendent sunset." He pointed to the smudge of kind of reddish-brownish-grayish to which he'd been referring.

"Your eyes," she replied without missing a beat, "are the same glorious shade as that transcendent smog." She pointed without slowing her stride.

Draco was just reflecting on how unfair it was to play games with women who could keep up—and, furthermore, who actually knew what the game _was_—when the startlingly attractive hair on the back of his startlingly attractive neck prickled.

He had learned to listen to those startlingly attractive hairs. He had learned that the hard way.

Barely had he had time to grab Hermione's arm and throw them both to the uneven pavement before the curse sailed over their heads.

Draco was on his feet again in a fraction of a second, wand raised. "_Rictusempra_!" he shouted. The cowled figure in the alley doubled over, reduced to peals of hoarse, low, deeply intimidating laughter. Even as Hermione gaped, Draco snatched her arm again, pulled her to her feet, and commenced dragging her down the street. Momentarily, she recovered and attempted to match his pace.

"What—_(pant)_—the Hell—_(pant, pant)_—was _that_, Draco Malfoy?" she managed to cry shrilly.

All the panting was a little distracting. In her defense, Draco reflected, running in heels couldn't be a walk in the park.

_Geddit?_ his brain prompted gleefully.

"That was a Death Eater, darling," he replied. "Thought you'd—_(pant)_—had some exp—_(pant, pant)_—erience with those. Now where in the blazing Hell is your bloody bachelorette pad?"

"Here—_(pant)_—hang a right—_no_, your _other_ right—"

_I am a MALFOY, _Draco thought. _I have no need for your pathetic directions!_

Hermione towed him into a run-down lobby and then up two run-down flights of stairs—after which she gave up and went into the run-down hallway to seek the run-down elevator. Upon finding the coveted set of tarnished silver doors, she pressed the button and leaned against the wall, continuing to pant with a vengeance.

Draco Malfoy looked at her. This was her opportunity to have a romance-novel heroine moment—swelling bosom heaving sensuously, vivacious pink blush touching her cheekbones, et cetera. But no. There was pink all over her face, more blotchy than vivacious, and she was taking great, gulping, greedy breaths in a very wretched sort of way. She looked like she'd just run a quarter mile and up two flights of stairs in heels. Which she had, of course, but that didn't necessarily _justify_ it.

To be fair, Draco relented, sighing to himself, he probably looked a little windswept, too.

The elevator doors parted, and they stepped inside. Then the doors slammed shut again, with an ominous creaking sound followed by an equally-ominous crunching sound.

"This place is a hellhole," Draco decided in some surprise. He looked at Hermione. "You live in a hellhole." He looked at the elevator doors in front of him, which might well never open again. "Oh, God. We're trapped in a hellhole, and we're going to die."

"We are _not_," Hermione snorted, less-than-convincingly. "I've taken this elevator a thousand times."

"And feared for your life every time," Draco hazarded.

Hermione chewed on her lip and watched the ancient needle pan over the numbers that represented the floors, choosing not to answer.

_4… 4… 4… 4… 5!_

_5… 5… 5… 5… 6!_

_6… 6… 6… 6… 7!_

The doors opened.

"We survived!" Draco crowed triumphantly.

"Very funny," Hermione responded, sounding, once again, less than amused. Unceremoniously she took his wrist and pulled him out of the deathtrap elevator and down the deathtrap hall. "Now, don't let anybody see you."

"What?" Draco prompted, grinning again. Couldn't keep that grin down for long. It was like a buoy. "Worried you'll have to _share_?"

She deigned to glance at him over her shoulder. In so doing, she narrowly avoided smashing into a wall. She blinked. Then, a moment later, she responded, watching where she was going this time. "More like, worried someone will see us together, and I'll never live it down." She fished a key out of her purse and jammed it into an utterly unremarkable door with the number _78_ on it in bronze letters old enough to crumble into dust at a touch.

"Now, don't be selfish," Draco reprimanded.

"Go to Hell," she shot back.

"I believe we've established," Draco replied equably, "that I'm already there."


	3. Not Stupid, Thanks

_Author's Note: If you see any typos, tell me. I'll send 'em to meet their maker._

_Which would be me._

_Reviewers will get an imaginary cookie frosted with real thankfulness!_

_Fishing for reviews makes me feel like a fanfiction whore._

_Oh well! I am!_

* * *

Chapter Three

Not Stupid (Thanks)

If there was one thing Hermione Granger was not, it was stupid. If there was another adjective to which she categorically had no claim, it was "rich." Ministry work was thankless in more ways than one, and her apartment reflected the sad state of things quite succinctly.

So it was with no little amount of surprise that she watched Dra—_Malfoy_ poking around gleefully, making excited little comments about "feminine touches" and "homey ambiance." He took a particular liking to the silk flowers in a plastic vase that adorned the tiny table in her kitchen, the word magnets on her fridge that allowed you to spell out things like "The dog is eating purple anguish" and "King Picasso lives under your bed," and the relentlessly cushy orange couch in the less-than-spacious living room. His approval of the lattermost was constructive, at least; that was where he'd be sleeping, provided that she didn't murder him in cold blood between now and bedtime.

"Charming; simply _charming_," Malfoy concluded contentedly, flopping down on the aforementioned couch, which might once have been a blinding orange color and was now reduced to a shade somewhere between radioactive sludge and molding sweet potatoes.

"I thought this was a hellhole," Hermione noted dryly.

Malfoy smiled that same cocksure, devil-may-care, hopelessly endearing smile. "The rest is," he decided. "This is better. This is a purgatory-hole."

Clearly, he was incorrigible.

He looked at her, and there was a lazy tilt to his smile now. "I'll interpret your unwavering gaze to mean that you're too shy to offer a verbal come-on," he remarked.

"Don't," she responded immediately.

"Then why, fair maiden, are you so intently eyeing me, if not to imagine me bereft of my clothing?"

Fighting down a blush, she cut to the chase. "I want to know why you didn't kill the Death Eater."

Malfoy's smile disappeared like a candle flame extinguished. Then, slowly, a ghost of it returned. "It's harder to kill a man than you might think, Miss Granger," he replied in an airy tone of ersatz blitheness. "Even for one so irretrievably morally dissolute as myself."

Hermione looked at him—really looked at him, discerningly, from head to toe. There were things laid bare in the yellowish lamplight of her apartment that the original astonishment, the persistent image of his pink tongue against the contours of the plastic spoon, and the desperation of flight had shielded from her notice. Malfoy had been working on a set of broad shoulders and a suave swagger even before they'd graduated from Hogwarts. Those shoulders were still there, as was the swagger—but there was a bit of a stiffness to him, a tautness to his bearing that hinted at matching tension within. His clothes hung a little off of his body, and the fabric, which had once been pristinely fine, showed traces of wear. There was a hint of something haggard in his face, something hunted, that appeared only in unpredictable flickers and was otherwise entirely invisible. He was thin, he was tired, and he was still maintaining that smile with a hint of a smirk.

"Undressing me with your eyes again so soon?" he inquired. "That was quick."

Hermione chose to ignore the comment—though some small, unashamed part of her brain wanted to go ahead and prove him right—and folded her arms across her chest. "Are you hungry?"

Malfoy's ever-mutable smile did another about-face, becoming that of a kid in a candy store. "What'cha makin', Mommy?" he asked gleefully.

Hermione sighed. It was going to be a long indeterminate period of time.

"What are you in the mood for?" she asked in reply.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Once Malfoy had devoured a considerable quantity of pea soup (from a can) and an equally considerable quantity of spaghetti (from a box) topped with marinara sauce (from a jar) and washed it all down with some lemonade (from concentrate), Hermione deemed it meet to begin the interrogation.

She had just opened her mouth when Malfoy began, very suggestively, to lick his fork.

"Could you _not_?" she burst out.

"Could I not what?" he inquired sweetly.

She dropped it. "What have you been doing to bring you here, Malfoy?" she demanded.

He paused in sucking on the tines of the fork and looked at her. "What?"

Hermione tried not to roll her eyes. She really did. Unfortunately, she failed. "Don't give me that. You come waltzing into the Ministry begging for sanctuary, a Death Eater tries to kill us in the street, and you're eating like you've recently survived a famine. What have you been doing?"

Malfoy returned his attention to the fork. "Well, you know," he answered lightly. "Pissing people off was always one of my specialties." His eyes darted to hers momentarily. "And if you're any indication, I haven't lost my touch."

Playing up the fact that she wasn't taking the bait, Hermione folded her arms on the table and looked at him intently.

Malfoy smiled. "It is a story," he said, "for a dark and stormy night with much melodramatic thunder and lightning, rising in a crescendo of blasting sound and light, the power of which drives two old enemies closer together… on the couch… possibly without all their clothes on…" She raised an eyebrow, and he grinned and went on. "…A tempest that sends branches scratching like demons' claws at the windowpanes; or that would, were the windowpanes not portals to a purgatory-hole seven floors off the ground, well out of reach of even the most enterprising trees."

"You're not going to tell me," Hermione concluded flatly.

A shadow crossed Malfoy's complacent smile. "I don't think either of us is ready for that just yet," he replied equably.

If that wasn't spine-tinglingly ominous, Hermione didn't know what was. And, as she had painstakingly established to herself and to others, Hermione Granger was not stupid—thanks very much. Therefore, when she stumbled upon things that made her feel as if a cockroach was climbing her spine like it was a miniature Mount Everest with vertebrae, she ran the Hell in the other direction. Sometimes with arms flailing.

"All right," she conceded. "Then we'll wait for a dark and stormy night. In the meantime, what shall we do?"

Malfoy waved his fork around ostentatiously, as if conducting an orchestra composed of the peas and carrots floating in the dregs of his soup bowl. "I haven't the faintest idea, my dear. Do you have any good movies lying around, or are you far too busy for that sort of frivolous thing?"

Hermione's eyebrows rose higher than they had yet. Pretty soon, she reflected wryly, she'd be breaking some serious eyebrow-raising records. "You've discovered films, have you?" was what she said.

Emphatically, Malfoy nodded. "Brilliant, aren't they? The one thing I can't believe the wizarding world has done without…" He gazed absently off into space, and Hermione got the distinct feeling that he had given this idea some thought. "And think about if they hadn't. I mean, you could have the most _amazing_ special effects, right? 'Cause they'd be magic, right? You could have the most bloody _awesome_ explosions and all—" Abruptly he paused and chewed on his lip. "Of course, it wouldn't very well _impress_ anyone, seeing as how any wizard worth his salt is blowing cars up in his backyard by the time he's eight. Little _Reparo_, and it's all patched up, and everything. So it'd have to be high drama, I guess, since that's not something you can conjure with a wand, right, and why are you looking at me that way?"

It took Hermione a moment to realize that he had shifted topics and was addressing her. "Oh," she said eloquently. "Because you were digressing hugely."

Blithely, Malfoy shrugged and smiled. "Caught you anyway, didn't I?"

Instead of admitting that he had, Hermione busied herself arranging his bed on the couch. It wasn't too long later that she was settling down to sleep herself—or to try to. She had the strangest urge to go peek at Malfoy where she'd left him, sprawled out on the orange abomination that was her couch.

But she didn't obey that urge. That would have been terribly stupid.


	4. A Little Healthy Havoc

_Author's Note: And… yeah. I'm really just putting a note at the beginning of each chapter for the sake of putting a note at the beginning of each chapter._

_Do you like Fridays, or do you like Fridays?_

* * *

Chapter Four

A Little Healthy Havoc

At about seven-thirty the next morning, Draco Malfoy stirred himself out of a hideous monstrosity of a dream about elevators with gnashing teeth and pink unicorns that wanted to be petted (it was complicated). He rubbed his eyes, yawned loudly and luxuriously, peeled himself off the couch, and stumped into the kitchen (presuming that the word "kitchen" described the closet of a room), scratching at the stubble emerging on his chin. There were two primary reasons that he shaved less than polite hygiene might have dictated. The first was that a little bit of a beard here and there made him marginally less recognizable. The second was that it was, as far as he was concerned, damn sexy.

Liberally scratching his equally sexy behind, he opened the refrigerator and thrust his head in. Lurking between a positively evil-looking jar of salsa and a dish of something that might once have been leftover casserole was, he discovered, a carton of orange juice. He picked it up, sloshed it around a bit, unscrewed the top, and sniffed delicately. He waited. He didn't die. Accordingly, he unearthed a glass from one of the cupboards and poured for himself. Punctiliously he replaced the top and set the carton back in the fridge. Then he did his best lounge against the counter as he sipped.

His efforts did not go unrewarded.

Shortly, Hermione Granger bustled in, dressed to the hilt for some labor-law-defying work at the Ministry. The suit was a good cut on her, Draco decided. You know. Considering what the unlucky suit had to work with. She paused upon noticing him lounging expertly.

"Forget I was here?" he inquired cheerfully.

Hermione frowned. Apparently, despite all evidence to the contrary during school, Hermione Granger was not a morning person. It wasn't too surprising. They were an elusive breed, those ungodly hour-loving freaks of nature.

Draco himself was a whenever-best-to-drive-people-insane person. And, alternately, a whenever-would-save-his-ass person.

"Hardly," Hermione answered crisply. She folded her arms across her chest and appraised him. "Are you going to stay here while I go to work?"

Winsomely—he had practiced extensively in the mirror and designated this one "winsome" after no little deliberation—Draco smiled. "Actually," he remarked, "I was hoping to go with you."

Hermione looked at him like a poinsettia had sprouted from his left ear. She was so flabbergasted that he raised a hand to it, just to check. He disguised the motion by smoothing his hair unnecessarily.

"You can't," Hermine managed after about thirty-five seconds.

"Why not?" he asked. "I mean, I need a job, right? What better way—"

"What are you wearing?" she interrupted.

Draco looked down at himself. "This," he noted.

Being a woman, she didn't let it rest. "Your jeans are about to fall apart," she told him, pointing at the huge rip over his knee for emphasis. "Did you _sleep_ in those jeans?" Before he could ask what was wrong with that, she moved on. "And what did you _do_ to that shirt?" Draco glanced at it. To him, it appeared to be a plain white T-shirt, admittedly a little worse for the wear. To her, it might as well have been on fire. "Are those—" All of a sudden, the slightly shrill tone of reprimand went out of her voice, to be replaced by a bit of confusion. "—bloodstains?"

Draco brushed a bit of fuzz off of himself. "Let them be what they are," he said. "Can I go to the Ministry with you or not?"

Hermione Granger, Draco reflected, should have adopted a vast litter of children, because she had the motherly scowl thing down pat.

"Not in those clothes, you can't."

Histrionically and hyperbolically, Draco sighed, chugged the last of his orange juice, rinsed his glass, placed it in the dishwasher, and trudged to the single bathroom, pausing only to get his forlorn pack and drag it along behind him like a pull-toy. He managed to rustle up a pair of black slacks (egregiously wrinkled from its captivity) and a button-up white shirt (likewise abused). He put them on, looked in the mirror, and considered tucking the shirt in—for about an eighteenth of a second. It would have taken at least three Hermiones, each armed with a blowtorch and a kitchen cleaver, to push him to that feat of madness.

He opened the door and poked his head out.

"Hermy, darling," he called.

He received a very not-amused "What?" in return from the kitchen.

"Can I use your perfume?"

"_No_."

"Damn it."

She sighed. "Look, I've usually already left by this time. Can you _please_ stop screwing around—?"

Draco sauntered back out into the living room and tossed his bag at the couch. He missed. He didn't really care. "We need some major Skele-Gro here," he announced. At Hermione's cocked eyebrow, he explained, "To grow you a funny bone."

"Har, har," Hermione said, but he thought she was hiding a smile.

They Apparated to the Ministry side by side, and Draco was, for the umpteenth time, helplessly grateful that he had managed to retain his wand. That was a miraculous godsend, as far as godsends went. And Draco knew godsends—by now, anyway. Godsends were the reason his sorry ass was making its way into the Ministry behind Hermione. The sending gods must have had a soft spot for that ass of his. He appreciated it.

Signing in, Hermione referred to him as "a guest." She gave him a stern glance to indicate that she wanted him to stick to her little story—as if he needed it. The last thing he was going to do was go prancing around the Ministry of Magic, singing "My name is Draco, Draco Ma-alfoy" to the tune of the "Toreador Song" from _Carmen_.

Well, maybe the second-to-last thing. There were worse things that flushing your dignity down the toilet. A few, at least. Like eating lutefisk.

They reached Hermione's desk. She sat down, sighed, and then stood up again.

"I'm going to go get some coffee," she declared.

Draco nodded his approbation. "Good. You look like something out of _Night of the Living Dead_." He grinned. "Or _Morning of the Living Dead_."

"Whoever introduced you to movies," Hermione muttered, "is in for it." She stalked off down the hall.

Draco plopped down in her chair. It was a rolling chair, and it spun nicely on its axle, offering up a piercing _squeak_ every time he moved. He rubbed the armrests appreciatively.

He lasted five whole minutes before he was careening down the hallway whooping at the top of his lungs. Best part was, a couple of Ministry slaves came rattling down the hall after him in their own chairs. It was like _Ride of the Valkyries_, only in rolling chairs, without the winged helmets and blonde braids. Draco cackled.

Then he collided with Hermione Granger as she appeared around the corner, and coffee splashed all over her white shirt and slate gray suit jacket.

She screamed.

"Erm," Draco said meekly.

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and then pointed her wand at her clothes and muttered, "_Tergeo_."

The coffee disappeared. Draco was considering the wisdom of doing the same. Before he could sidle innocently away and then run for it, she looked at him.

"Is that my chair?" she inquired pointedly.

Draco glanced down at it, trying to seem as though he was seeing it for the first time. "Why…" he said. "Why, yes it is! Isn't that strange?"

Mercifully, she didn't send him back to the hellhole apartment building. Rather, she let him loiter around her desk and sent him off to bring her things. Frequently. She was _reveling_ in having him serve her every whim.

He frowned as he went to deliver something (he forgot what) to someone (he forgot who). Women were like that. Start up a little bit of healthy havoc in the office; a dose of constructive chaos, spill _one_ coffee cup, and you were the Errand Bitch for _life_.


	5. The Department of Malapropisms

_Author's Note: I got nothin'._

_Nothin' but this chapter!_

* * *

Chapter Five

The Department of Malapropisms

"When are we going to go get lunch?" Malfoy asked.

Hermione looked at him. "In five minutes." She looked at the letter again.

_Deer Ministry, I feel it is my civil duty to explain to you a gigantic fault in you're system—_

"That's what you said…" Malfoy was looking critically at the placidly-ticking clock. "…six minutes ago."

Hermione put her pen down. "Fine," she said. "Let's go now." The less she had to think about deer running the Ministry, the better. Worst thing was, she was beginning to think that deer might do a better job of it.

As she led the way towards the cafeteria, Malfoy hummed to himself. It took her a moment to figure out what the song was, and then she had it—"Ride of the Valkyries."

"Why do you do this?" burst out of her mouth.

"Do what, darling?" he replied innocently.

"Act like a child with mind-numbing consistency," she answered crisply without breaking stride.

When he responded, his voice was so soft, so sad, and so horribly sincere that she stopped short.

"Because it's easier," he said. She turned, and on his face there was a sweet little smile that didn't touch his eyes. "What's for lunch?" he asked cheerfully.

"Um," Hermione said dumbly, "it depends on what the special is."

Turned out it was spaghetti. Which, if one might recall, was a considerable part of the improvised out-of-the-can-and-jar-and-box meal she'd fed Malfoy the night before.

"Good thing I love pasketti," Malfoy noted lightly.

Hermione gave him a look, but he just strolled past her and went to pile a tray high with a little bit of everything.

They sat down across from each other at one of the small steel tables, Malfoy with a mountain of edibles, Hermione with a serving of salad and a tiny container of low-fat dressing. She poked at a crouton as her companion dug in heartily. He had demolished a considerable pile of spaghetti before he glanced up and paused.

"That's it?" he asked, nodding at her plate.

Thinly Hermione smiled. "I have a slow metabolism and don't exercise much. Limits my choices a bit."

In that infuriatingly unconcerned way he had, Malfoy shrugged. "Never understood people eating like they want to prolong their suffering on this planet. No one lives forever. In fact, there's an Oingo Boingo song about it." Contentedly, with a pedantic finger raised and waving slightly in rhythm, Malfoy rattled off lyrics like a machine gun. "_No one beats him at his game/For very long, but just the same/Who cares there's no place safe to hide/Nowhere to run, no time to cry/So celebrate, while you still can/'Cause any second it may end/And when it's all be said and done/Better that you had some fun/Instead of hiding in a shell/Why make your life a living Hell?/So have a toast and down the cup/And drink to bones that turn to dust/'Cause no one, no one, no one, no one, no one lives forever. Hey!_"

Hermione blinked at him.

Sagely Malfoy nodded. "Pretty much sums up my philosophy. When I'm not relying on the charity of Ministry lackeys in hellhole apartment buildings, that is. Then my philosophy is 'Be good or get kicked out.'"

"That's quite right," Hermione said, glad to have something coherent to latch onto.

Pleasantly Malfoy returned to his quickly-disappearing continent of food, whittling down its shores like a tsunami armed with a fork. Of course, his table manners were nonetheless entirely impeccable. That wasn't surprising.

Glancing around, Hermione realized how this situation had to look. She and Malfoy were sitting across from each other, chatting animatedly over a leisurely (relatively speaking, in his case) lunch. It looked—ominous music started up in her brain—like a _date_.

She wasn't quite sure whether that idea was more unsettling or intriguing.

She was about halfway done poking uselessly at her salad—poking uselessly being a very important operation of many stages—when Malfoy finished. He went over to the frozen yogurt machine, created an astonishingly perfect spiral of chocolate-vanilla swirl in a cone, and returned to lay himself over his chair and lick at his masterpiece in that Draco Malfoy way he had.

Hermione was largely unsurprised when a few girls from the Department of Something-or-Other started watching him and giggling.

"Quite the exhibitionist," she remarked, spearing a tomato a bit more vindictively than was strictly necessary. The unfortunate vegetable—or was it a fruit? She couldn't remember how the debate had turned out—spurted forth pulpy orange innards all over the neighboring onion.

Malfoy grinned. "I try," he replied, feigning modesty. He gave another tremendous lick, and the girls "Ooooh"ed in unison.

Finding her appetite to be missing, presumed dead, Hermione ditched her salad and set her ugly red tray on the stack of them. She started to ask Malfoy if he was coming, but by then he was at her shoulder, still working away at his dessert.

"If I didn't know for a fact that you're twenty years old," she commented dryly, "I would be very concerned that someone's toddler had run away."

Malfoy chortled happily, and Hermione reproached herself for being pleased.

The letter, unfortunately, was still at her desk when she returned. She had been half-hoping that someone might have knocked it to the floor, where she could have pretended to ignore it, or even that some charitable extraterrestrials might have beamed it up into their ship.

No such luck.

_Deer Ministry…_

Hermione sat down, set her jaw, and started slogging through the rest of it.

She had just finished the part about how the "averse affects" of new laws were "a severe laps in judgment" when Malfoy finished his frozen yogurt and stood.

"Where's the little boys' room?" he wanted to know.

Glad for a reprieve but too proud to admit it, Hermione took to her feet as well to lead him there.

"You could just point," Malfoy noted.

She pointed, he went, and she sat down again, a little put out.

…_Sleight problems abound as a result of the so-called 'reforms' you infect upon us…_

…_Its long-since thyme that someone stood up against this flagging injustice…_

…_Clearly, the existing procedure lax a certain, shall we say, intelligence…_

Hermione blinked and then frowned. Her eyes narrowed. As if this cretin had any _write_ to speak of intelligence.

"Whatcha doin'?" Malfoy demanded cheerily from right next to her ear.

Squeaking despite herself, Hermione gave a great start in surprise, collided with something, and clapped a hand over her heart. "_What are you_—" she started to squeal indignantly.

"Ouhm," Malfoy groaned. He had both hands over his mouth.

Like fluttering birds, Hermione's flew to hers. "What'dIdo, what'dIdo?" she gasped out between her fingers.

"Bit my lip," Malfoy explained tersely. A trickle of blood dribbled down his chin.

Hermione covered her eyes. "Oh, God," she said. Then she peeked again. "How is it?"

Malfoy whipped about sixteen paper tissues from the box on her desk and dabbed obsessively at his lip. "Eh," he replied.

"'Eh'?" she repeated timorously.

"Eh," he confirmed with a shrug.

"That's not very descriptive," she whispered.

He shrugged again, drew the latest tissue-victim away from his mouth, and frowned at the spreading red presence threatening to take it over. "I may have to reprise my recent voyage," he remarked.

Hermione stared at him blankly.

"I'm going back to the bathroom," Malfoy translated.

"Oh," Hermoine acceded meekly.

And off he went.

It was very difficult to focus on the _vial_ accusations set forth oh-so horribly in the letter after that harrowing incident, but Hermione was still surprised when the girls from lunch clustered around her desk like a giggly, over-scented collection of flies descending upon an unattended sandwich.

Did that make her a sandwich?

"Where are they _selling_ them?" the first girl cried.

Hermione blinked at her three times. "Pardon?" she hazarded.

"The bloody _gorgeous_ guys!" a different girl cut in impatiently. "Where are they _selling_ them?"

Hermione blinked four times. "Are you accusing me of trafficking in human beings?" she asked slowly.

There was a pause.

"Well, how else is someone like you going to get a guy?" The third girl shrugged dainty shoulders and pursed dainty lips. Then they parted as she grinned. "So where can we get ours? Or can we have yours?"

For a few moments, Hermione was preoccupied with suppressing the gag reflex. Then she shooed the flies with a clipped "Don't you have work to do?", glared at the letter, jammed it in her _Out_ box, and went to fetch Malfoy.


	6. Corpse Skin the Cat

_Author's Note: Felines within based on and inspired by real pets._

* * *

Chapter Six

Corpse Skin the Cat

In the Ministry restroom, Draco considered his lip intently, almost pressing his face to the mirror over the sink. It was a little puffy, that lip was. Eh. Maybe it would look more kissable that way.

Come to think of it, he could do to look a little puffier all around. He posed a bit in front of the mirror, to no avail. That whole Starvation Diet Regimen he'd been forced to undertake had worked wonders, but they were wonders he hadn't needed. He looked kind of… _scrawny_.

He saw his scrawny shoulders slump. That was definitely not sexy. Definitely not. Girls needed a little meat on their men.

His scrawny back straightened a little as he put it all in perspective. He was safe, at least for the moment; he was lodging with Hermione Granger, who was quite tolerable when she forgot to pretend she didn't want to throw him on the floor and ravish him; he had indulged in two very filling meals in the past twenty-four hours; and all he had suffered for it was a lip that was a little puffy—not even _really_ puffy. Not even _what-poisonous-thing-did-you-try-to-suck-on_-_now_ puffy.

The door opened a crack, and a little voice said, "Draco?"

"Yes?" he replied.

"Um, how are you doing?"

"Quite well, thank you; and yourself?"

"Um."

"Succinctly put."

There was a scuffing sound that he thought was probably her shuffling her feet. "Well, I… wanted to say…"

_That I want to throw you on the floor and ravish you,_ Draco prompted mentally. _That your slightly-puffy lip is the sexiest thing I've seen since… ever. That scrawny is the new built._

"…that I'm sorry… about… hitting you."

_Damn._

"'S fine," he responded calmly. "It being an accident, and all."

"You sure?"

"As sure as I am that people are going to wonder why you're halfway into the men's bathroom, darling."

"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten."

The door closed again, fully, but it was all right, because she was beginning to sound like herself again.

After poking at his lip a bit more, Draco returned to the fray that was the office and once more took up his place in a folding chair next to Hermione's desk. For a while, he was content to watch people come and go, but the place wasn't particularly populous, so that didn't last too long. He ended up emptying Hermione's little cardboard box of paperclips and linking them all together into a chain, which he arranged around the perimeter of her desk like tinsel. That done, he made fifteen origami cranes out of sticky notes and used the remaining adhesive on them to attach them to various surfaces, including nearby sections of the wall. He tried to stick one on his forehead, but it wouldn't stay. After that, Draco Malfoy—the single heir to the Malfoy estate; the dignified; the aristocratic; the tall, light, and handsome; the painfully sexy—was reduced to drawing stick figures in different hats.

Tomorrow, he was going to bring a deck of cards.

He had just stumbled upon the earth-shattering revelation that he could also draw stick figure _dogs_ when Hermione muttered something.

"Come again?" he said.

"I hate my job," she repeated, slightly more audibly.

_I hate it, too,_ Draco thought. But that wasn't very encouraging. "What are you doing, exactly?" he inquired politely.

"Filing complaints," she spat.

As he reflected on ways to stay out of killing range, Draco raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like the best possible way to squander your talents, yes," he decided.

Sighing halfheartedly, Hermione tapped her pen on the latest letter.

"So why don't you quit?" Draco asked.

Hermione sighed again, this time with _feeling_. "Because I don't know what else I would do."

Draco considered for a moment. Then he bent over his paper and drew a stick figure girl with lightning and flames coming out of her stick wand—at the _same time_. He proffered it to Hermione.

"That's you," he informed her, pointing.

She cracked a smile.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When they returned to the purgatory-hole of Hermione's apartment, Draco discovered that was that there was a _thing_ on his couch.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing an accusing finger in the _thing_'s direction.

Hermione looked at the _thing_. "Oh," she said nonchalantly. "That's my cat."

The _thing_ was a _cat_? Draco squinted. There was a vague resemblance. Well, more than a vague resemblance. Except that—

"It has three legs," he noted. "And half a left ear."

"Yes, well." Hermione was hanging her keys on a hook in the kitchen and setting her bag down. "Crookshanks—" Her voice broke a little. "Crookshanks just died, so—so I went down to the shelter, and nobody wanted Sparky."

The _thing_'s name was _Sparky_? Draco squinted harder. That shade of gray wasn't _sparky_ by any stretch of the imagination. Rather, as far as he could tell—

"Looks like it should be 'Soot,'" he remarked. "Or maybe 'Ash.' Or maybe 'Corpse Skin.' Does it catch mice?"

"No."

"Does it catch bugs, then?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

Draco raised an eyebrow at the _thing_. The _thing_ licked its one remaining front paw calmly.

"Does it do _anything_?"

"It's a _he_," Hermione corrected, "and he eats and sleeps and wanders around, which is about what you've been doing."

Draco sat down next to the _thing_ and patted its head. It gave him an approving look.

"I think we'll get along splendidly, Corpse Skin," he said.

From the kitchen came a noise that sounded suspiciously like Hermione snorting trying not to laugh.

Draco got up and went to join her, and Sparky followed, twining his body around Draco's ankles, likely seeking to send him tripping to his death. It was probably revenge for the whole 'Corpse Skin' thing, and Draco couldn't really blame him.

He sat down across from Hermione, and the cat leapt into his lap and commenced kneading his leg with one set of claws. Draco winced.

"What's on the agenda for this evening?" he inquired.

Hermione kicked her shoes off and snapped open the newspaper she'd picked up in the lobby. "I dunno," she told him bemusedly. "You might have been wise to pick a better hostess."

Smirking, Draco wondered if there had ever been a time when he had done what was _wise_. "I think I'll learn to survive," he remarked.

"Oh?"

"This cat and I," he added, "are _soul-mates_."

Hermione turned a page. "You want to order a pizza or something?"

"I would love nothing more," Draco averred. That wasn't true, of course, but it certainly sounded nice and dramatic.

Upon finding a number in the phone book, he had the unfortunate young man on the other end read him off the alphabetical list of all of their pizzas and what each entailed. By "Vegetarian Supreme" (onions, bell peppers, garlic, chives; jalapeños optional), the employee Draco had taken the opportunity to victimize was sounding more than a little miffed. Draco chose a pizza with all sorts of bizarre things on it, including about a trillion kinds of meat.

_Girls need a little meat on their men,_ he thought. _And Draco needs a little meat in his ickle tummykins._

He then proceeded to go into denial that he had so much as _thought_ such a thing.

"Thank you," he told the boy he'd harassed.

"Welcome," the charming tyke growled menacingly.

"Oh, God!" Hermione Granger cried.

Draco jammed the phone in the cradle and crossed over to her in two strides—which would have been a more impressive achievement if the kitchen hadn't been so unbearably small.

The article that had elicited the reaction was titled: "Mysterious Deaths in London Suburb." Trepidation rising cold in his chest, Draco scanned the first few lines.

_Henry and Eleanor Johnson, 48 and 44, were found dead in their Wimbledon home Wednesday morning when their maid arrived for routine housekeeping. Cause of death is unknown and has baffled police, as no visible signs of struggle exist and no wounds of any sort are present. Coroner Michael Giré says of the incident that it is "very strange. There's always got to be some sort of mark, but there isn't."_

Draco met Hermione's eyes. There was steely resolve in them, and a resigned sort of bravery, but there was also a plea.

It was a feat that she sounded calm when she remarked, "Looks like whoever's after you knows you're around here somewhere."

"Looks like it," he replied, willing his voice to remain steady despite the influx of instincts in him. _Run. Hide. Disappear. Flee for your life._

"Let's put that out of our minds, shall we?" Hermione proposed, forcing some cheer into her tight voice.

Before Draco could ask how in the blazes they were supposed to do that, Sparky sat down on the newspaper, smack dab in the middle of the offending article.

"Good Corpse Skin," Draco said, scratching the intact ear. The cat purred.


	7. Some Kind of Joke

_Author's Note: Shazam! __I turned eighteen on Saturday. Why don't you give me a review for my birthday?_

_(End review prostitution.)_

_Maybe if you're good, I'll update on Wednesday._

_(End review prostitution/blackmail. __Begin chapter.)_

* * *

Chapter Seven

Some Kind of Joke

Malfoy was drinking orange juice straight from the carton when Hermione came into the kitchen. She chose to ignore that little breach of etiquette.

"I'm collecting the laundry," she told him. "I'll take yours, too, if you want."

Malfoy crossed to the sink and fastidiously rinsed out the carton. "That'd be great," he replied. He waved the container in his hand around a little. "You have a recycle bin?"

"Uh," Hermione said noncommittally, slipping back into the living room to raid his pack. Dumping it out on the couch yielded a surprisingly small quantity of clothes and various portable belongings. She sorted through two T-shirts, two white dress shirts, the gray slacks he'd worn Wednesday, the black ones he'd worn yesterday, and a pair of jeans that had fared somewhat better than the ones he slept in. Within their folds she unearthed a battered leather wallet, a scuffed Swiss army knife, a comb in need of a few new teeth, a disposable razor, a nearly-empty bottle of cologne, a few frayed handkerchiefs, a set of house keys, and a worn pack of playing cards.

"I was looking for those," Malfoy said of the lattermost item. He plucked it from the wreckage, tucked it into his back pocket, and returned to monitoring his toast. Hermione hadn't yet mustered up the heart to tell him that there wasn't any butter. Or marmalade. Or jam. Or anything. Hers was a rather condiment-deprived existence.

She flipped the wallet open. There was an identification card with a picture of Malfoy smirking at the camera, a very expired coupon for a free burrito at some fast-food place, and about twelve pounds. Hermione searched the pockets of the pants, but the dozen pounds was the only money she could find. As far as she could tell, it was all he had to his name.

Things were a little more dire than Dear Drakey was letting on.

She gathered up his clothes, insured that none of them were dry-clean only (that being a mistake she'd made before, to disastrous results), and stuffed them in her laundry bag. That was tonight's task. Sitting in the laundry room feeding coins to the ornery washing machines was a smashing way to spend a Friday night. For Hermione Granger, it was also a tradition.

Malfoy was munching toast and stroking the fur under Sparky's chin. He had shaved sometime before, during, or after the shower he'd taken last night, and it softened his chin, made his face younger and more vulnerable. Sparky lifted his head complacently, and Malfoy's fingers followed. He looked pensive, tired, and gorgeous.

Malfoy, that was. Not the cat. The cat looked kind of pitiful with admirable consistency.

Malfoy finished his (unadorned) toast and went to the counter to retrieve another piece of bread. Watching him closely, Hermione appraised the rust-colored stains and the jagged rips that bedizened his rumpled T-shirt.

"Take your shirt off," she commanded.

Abruptly Malfoy turned. To his credit, he rebounded from his astonishment in seconds. "I usually save that for the _second_ date," he remarked, "but if you insist…"

"I insist."

He paused, and she knew she had him.

"Hermione, love," he said slowly, "do you remember all that wonderfully eloquent stuff I told you about dark and stormy nights?"

"Yes."

"Let's wait for one of those."

His gaze was firmly attached to the peeling linoleum, but there was something in the set of his shoulders that was at once firmly resolved and already defeated. And something in that image told her that she had to let it go.

For now.

As she started back to her room, she saw that Malfoy's bag had fallen unevenly—that there was still something in it. She upended it over the couch and shook, and, sure enough, as she should quite obviously have known, a few more articles fell free: a few pairs of boxers, a few pairs of socks, and an undershirt, all colored a rosy, even pink. Then a final item straggled down to plop contentedly upon its predecessors.

It was a pair of red socks.

Yes, Hermione would be doing the laundry around here.

Malfoy was off in the bathroom again.

"Hermy, darling?"

"Yes?" she called back.

"Can I use your perfume?"

She sighed, but, to her chagrin, she did so fondly. "No, Malfoy."

"Not even a spritz?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When they arrived at the Ministry, there was a morbidly obese manila folder on her desk, an abomination of organization vomiting forth a positively sinful amount of papers. Hermione felt her heart sink from her chest to her stomach to her shoes. It probably would have continued from then on, spiraling down through the stony layers of the Earth, snaking through the magma until it was incinerated in the fiery core, had she not gathered up her resolve and sat down in her chair. She opened the folder. And then she looked imploringly up at Malfoy, who had not yet taken his seat.

"Might you be dreadfully kind enough to go grab me a coffee?" she asked desperately.

He bowed deeply. "Your humble servant, madam," he said again.

She didn't give him any crap for it this time. He had long since proved that he was humbler and more servile than she ever would have thought possible.

Shortly after Malfoy had disappeared, the girls returned, descending like harpies to feast on human flesh.

"You brought him back?" one of them squealed. "You're such a dear! Are you nearly done with him?"

"You're revolting" slipped out of her mouth in a mumble.

"What's that?" They leaned in closer, and Hermione leaned back, attempting to escape the sickening cloud of overpowering fruity fragrance.

"Um, no, I don't think I'm quite done," she amended weakly.

The brunette folded her arms across her chest. "Well, are you going to lend him to us when you are?"

The blonde leaned in eagerly. "Or just tell us where you found him. There's got to be more."

Hermione felt one of her eyebrows flick upwards of its own volition. "You talk about him like he's property."

"_Hot property_!" came the chorus, followed by a bout of giggles.

Surreptitiously Hermione drew the top drawer of her desk open and started groping around within it for a sharpened pencil. It was looking like she might need to defend herself.

"Ooh, what's his name?" the redhead demanded, spreading glossy russet lips in a hungry grin. "I bet it's something horribly sexy, like 'Maximilian Venturous.'"

Hermione wondered whether she had stolen it off of the back cover of a seedy romance novel or made it up all-by-herself-with-help. These girls probably couldn't make up their _minds_ unless they had help.

"Um, no," she replied evasively.

"'Alexander Lace'?" the blonde supplied helpfully.

"Not so much," Hermione noted, cringing a little.

"'Xavier Weirwood'?" the brunette hazarded.

"I'm afraid not," she answered.

_A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead were all at the office, vying for a geeky girl's good-looking roommate…_

It sounded like the setup for some kind of joke. Some kind of really lousy joke. Some kind of really lousy not-at-all-funny joke.

As they all paused to think, Hermione heard something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand to attention and salute—Malfoy's laugh from down the hall. Frantically she racked her brains. What had she said yesterday that had cleared them out like so much dirty bathwater?

And then she had it, because she was, first and foremost, Hermione Granger.

"Er, don't you ladies have work to do?" she said loudly.

"Oh," the blonde one said, her exquisitely-made-up face falling. "Oh, dear."

"So we do," the brunette sighed in agreement. The redhead just shook her head dolefully, sending copper ringlets bouncing in a disgustingly attractive way. Mournfully the trio trooped off and disappeared.

Hermione stared after them. It was like… magic.

She wanted to jot the magical words down on a sticky note, but she discovered that she didn't have any. She settled with scribbling it on the wing of an origami crane.

Just as she finished, Malfoy sidled up to her desk again, but he wasn't alone. Laughing heartily at his side was Giles Helicane.

Giles Helicane, for better or—no, just for worse—was Hermione's boss. He was built like a bowling ball, but with limbs and a head, and he had a penchant for expensive cigars. Especially with that considered, he bore a bit of a resemblance to Winston Churchill—but that, as far as Hermione had ever been able to tell, Giles Helicane was not very smart, not very noble, and not very good to be around at all. If all the demons in the bowels of Hell had been assembled, and someone had picked the cruelest, meanest, most obnoxious one to command Hermione Granger, Giles Helicane would _still_ have been worse.

Helicane laughed a bit more and then slurped from his coffee.

Far, far worse.

"And what did you say was your name again, dear boy?" he asked Malfoy jovially.

"Ardoc Olyfam," Malfoy said glibly.

"Right, right. Ardoc," Helicane went on grandiosely, "clearly you're a scintillatingly intelligent young buck—"

"Well," Malfoy tried to cut in modestly, "I—"

"—so it would be downright dotty of me not to make use of it." Helicane prodded Malfoy's chest with a podgy finger. "I," Helicane continued, "am down one personal secretary. Woman's gone on maternity leave, and I'm willing to bet she'll be staying home with the ankle biter after that—you know how women are about their broods." He laughed uproariously, and Malfoy managed a slightly strained smile. "Right," Helicane went on when his whole round girth had ceased to shake with laughter. "So what do you say, Ardoc, m'boy? Interested?"

"Um" was what Malfoy said.

"Excellent!" Helicane roared happily. "Come down to my office! We'll have a bit of wine to celebrate, and I'll show you your new desk!"

"Um," Malfoy repeated. Hermione discovered that he was looking bewilderedly at her.

As if she could help him.

As if she wanted to.

Helicane focused momentarily on her, and his bright blue eyes instantly shifted from sprightly and convivial to sharp and cold. "Granger," he greeted her curtly. Before she could respond, the change had been reversed, and he was clapping Malfoy on the back so hard that his victim almost toppled into the midst of his own origami crane display. "Anytime you like, Ardoc, come on by!" he pledged. "You can start working tomorrow! Hell, it's Saturday, but it makes no difference to me! Just ask for your old pal Giles, that's a good boy!"

With that, he bustled off.

Malfoy was standing there dumbly, but Hermione stared stonily at the manila folder on her desk and the papers it was belching forth. Helicane, Giles Helicane, had just offered Malfoy a job—no, _handed_ him a job; a nice job, a cushy job, gift-wrapped with a red bow on top. She had been working here for a year to _no_ avail, and Malfoy waltzed in _one day_ and _received_ a job. A job that should, by all rights, have been _hers_.

When Hermione did look up at Draco Malfoy, her cheeks and her eyes were both aflame.

"Um," Malfoy said meekly, shakily putting forth his peace offering, "I brought you some coffee."

This had to be some kind of joke. Because if it wasn't, Hermione was going to kill someone.


	8. Awkward

_Author's Note: Gar. That was me being scary._

_reviewers r for teh pwnzorz, LOL!!!!11_

_Pretend Private Message to Katie: I'm utterly overjoyed that I could improve your day. I know how it is sometimes (i.e. atrocious), and it makes me very happy to have helped. Since I can't reply to your reviews, I'll thank you here for the consistent support—I really appreciate it!_

* * *

Chapter Eight

Awkward

Draco winced. And then, because that didn't quite seem like enough, he winced again.

Hermione, that pinnacle of worldly wisdom and cool collectedness, had completely snapped. The girl was crazier than Luna Lovegood on a drug binge.

Well, maybe not _that_ crazy. That was a level of crazy that most mortal beings couldn't hope to comprehend.

In any case, Hermione had leapt out of her chair, jabbed a finger into his chest, told him in a loud and resonating voice to get his smarmy, slimy, smirking git face out of hers before she made it look like a Picasso painting, and stormed out. The storming out bit, while remarkably melodramatic, left Draco stranded in front of her desk, her coffee in his hand, with everyone within hearing range turning out to stare at him.

He winced one more time, just for good measure.

Then he set the coffee down carefully in the origami crane graveyard and ran after her. _Literally_ ran. He must have cared about Hermione even more than he had previously thought. You didn't _literally_ run after just anybody; no, sir. Sometimes you strode purposefully, but it wasn't really running unless you lifted up your knees, and honestly, you didn't lift up your knees for _any_ idiot who'd gone tearing off—

He almost missed Hermione altogether. Out of the corner of his eye, Draco caught a glimpse of rampant brown hair and crisp gray suit. He managed to skid to a halt that only mostly compromised his dignity and found himself in front of what looked to be one of those private conference rooms. The wall was glass parted by a few metal support beams, and within there resided a long oak table surrounded by rolling chairs, a large whiteboard on the wall beyond its head. Those things and, of course, Hermione Granger.

Such rooms tended to be soundproof. That soundproofing, Draco noted grimly as he set his hand on the door handle, was probably going to be a godsend.

After living with _his _parents for seventeen years, Draco Malfoy could smell a prospective chewing out from miles away. Furthermore, that smell not a palatable one.

He bit the bullet, opened the door, stepped inside, and shut the door after him. Then he looked up at Hermione.

The first thing she said—or, rather, spat—was "'Ardoc Olyfam,' huh?"

"It's an anagram," Draco explained helpfully.

"I know that," Hermione continued to spit. "I just can't believe—" She buried her hands in her hair and looked like she might be considering tearing it all out. Before Draco could warn her that bald-in-patches was definitely 'out' as far as hairstyles went, she recommenced her vituperative spitting with a vengeance. "I can't _believe_ that you'd be so _senseless_ as to start chumming it up with—" Draco had been under the impression that she couldn't _get_ any madder. He had been wrong, and the next two words proved it. "—_Giles Helicane_. You—"

Draco felt a twinge of anger in his own chest. He was being maligned here. Maligned! It was a fun word to say, but it was a pretty unpleasant thing to be.

"First of all," he interjected, "I couldn't exactly give the man my _real_ name. And _second_ of all, _he_ started chumming it up with _me_, not the other way ar—"

"Will you shut up and let me scream at you?" Hermione cried.

Indignantly, he opened his mouth. Then he closed it and set his jaw. Better to get this over with now.

"I just can't believe this!" Hermione screamed, true to her word, pulling a nice, histrionic pose with her face turned towards the heavens and her arms out wide. "I truly, honestly cannot _believe_ that you come sauntering in here, swinging your hips, and the _one_ time I leave you unattended—" This was clearly untrue. She had left him unattended at least half a dozen times in the past two days. "—you get _Giles Helicane_ under your spell, and the next thing anybody knows, he's practically _coercing_ you into taking a job! Never mind that I've been slaving away for over a year. Never mind that I get everything done _early_. Never mind that I'm so bored doing drudgework without advancement that I could _slaughter_ something. No! You come in here and kiss Giles Helicane's extremely oversized rear end _once_, and he's practically prostrate at your feet trying to get you to work for him!"

Draco wanted to point out that he really hadn't done any ass-kissing; he just hadn't very vociferously disagreed with anything that Helicane had said, but it didn't seem like a good moment to jump in. It seemed like a good moment to curl up under the table and die, or perhaps to throw himself on the floor and plead for forgiveness. Before he could figure out which was more likely to secure his place on the couch tonight, she was off again.

"And _God_ if this office isn't the worst place in the entire world to work!" she was howling. Draco was glad—relatively speaking—that she'd moved away from berating him and towards berating life in general. "The ascension of the pay ladder is nigh on nonexistent unless you've got hips like a hippopotamus and a waist like a yellow jacket and you're willing to bed your superior—" Draco hoped for a moment that he wouldn't have to do any such thing before he remembered that actually accepting Helicane's job offer would result in his untimely death. "—and as if _that's_ not enough, _my_ boss is the worst overweight, under-qualified, hypercritical buffoon of the _lot_! And as if _that's_ not enough, the health plan is _monstrous_! And if _that's_ not enough—" Draco was beginning to sense a pattern here. "—the coffee tastes like _sewage_! And if _that's_ not enough, three of my _colleagues_ keep bothering me asking if I've quite _finished_ with you so that _they_ can have a turn!"

There was a very, very, very long pause.

_Awkward, awkward, awkward, AWKWARD,_ Draco's brain chanted.

"Hey, listen," he said—awkwardly, it had to be admitted. "I'll go down and buy us both some ice cream and come back here; sound good?"

There was a noncommittal mutter that he was damn well going to take for an affirmation.

"Okay," Draco decided pleasantly—as pleasantly as humanly possible. "I'll just be going, then…"

"You don't have any money," Hermione informed him without looking up from her detailed scrutiny of the tabletop.

"Ah," Draco said, once again awkwardly.

She put some on the table, and he crept forward and snatched it up. It was like feeding a stray animal.

"Take it easy," he advised. And then he fled—awkwardly. Very awkwardly.

The awkwardness abated somewhat when Draco was out on the street. He took a deep breath of clean, awkward-free air and relished it. Thus braced, he began to stroll down the street towards the ice cream shop.

Dionyza's Ice Cream Parlour (with a _U_ for authenticity) had a pretty terrace and a nice, open front with a red-and-white striped awning and broad windows. It was in one of those windows, in the curve of the authentic _U_, that Draco saw something that made his blood—not to mention his sweat—run cold.

The man who had been hounding him for the last two years, the man who traced him with inhuman accuracy, the man who had tried to kill him more times than he could count, was on the other side of the street, poring over a newspaper.

Draco paused. He was standing right in front of the door to Dionyza's. If he opened that door and darted in, would the cheery jingle of the bell make his adversary rear his ugly head? A fat droplet of sweat—in fact, the _Giles Helicane _of droplets of sweat—slid down Draco's spine. Did he turn and try to walk inconspicuously away?

He had to do something. The most suspicious thing of all was what he was doing—standing frozen in front of the door to the ice cream shop.

Something that was distant kin to a nervous laugh crawled out of his throat and died in the air. _Geddit?_ _Frozen_ in front of an _ice cream shop_?

Decisively, Draco turned on his heel and strode in the opposite direction from the man with the newspaper. If there was one thing he refused to do, it was to be a bad pun waiting to happen. Determinedly he marched right into the first store he encountered.

And stopped short.

Mobiles suspended from the ceiling swiveled placidly above model cribs. Alphabet blocks were stacked in an intricate pyramid on a nearby table, and the entire right wall was invisible under the proliferation of baby clothes in every color of a pastel rainbow.

The woman behind the counter had massive glasses and an even more massive smile. She looked like a cross between Sybill Trelawney and an overzealous hippie.

"Hello, dear," she crooned. "How old is your little one?"

At his helpless squeak, her face positively _glowed_.

"Oh! How many do you have, dear? Three? Four?" She smiled adoringly and heaved a delighted sigh. "So young, and already so busily at work on a family."

Draco entertained a single coherent thought:

_Awkward, awkward, awkward, AWKWARD!_


	9. Deliciously Scandalous

_Author's Note: Every time I get a review, I dance inside. I'd dance for reals, but there's a pretty reasonable chance that someone would see me._

_Sorry about the slight delay. I'm staying at my dad's house for the weekend, and I was wrangling my three- and five-year-old brothers… Riley was playing what seemed to be a very vague imaginary game that involved walking a long way down the street, and I didn't want to stifle his creativity. Aren't I charitable._

_Anyway._

* * *

Chapter Nine

Deliciously Scandalous

Although she might have liked holding a grudge and forcing Malfoy to do some high-quality groveling, Hermione was feeling better by the time she returned to her desk. It was very possible that Helicane had simply overlooked the evident preeminence of her work and would soon come around and promote her repeatedly. Of course. Surely that was the reason.

She wished she didn't know better.

But it was all right. She was ready to apologize to Malfoy for yelling in his face and harassing him and blowing out his eardrums, and she was certainly ready to do it over a bit of ice cream—even though it was only about nine-thirty, which was a bit early for a dessert food, all things considered. That was okay. She'd make an exception today.

She half-glanced up when Malfoy returned to stand in front of her desk.

"What happened to the ice cream?" she inquired, trying not to betray her disappointment.

Malfoy didn't answer.

"Well?" she prompted.

Then she glanced at him all the way, and she discovered that he looked positively traumatized.

She felt her jaw drop and was powerless to stop it.

"What _happened_?" she demanded.

"Window," Malfoy said in a strangled sort of voice. "Newspaper. Imminent death." He covered his face with his hands. "_Pastel yellow footed blanket sleepers_!"

He sat down in his chair and kept his hands over his face for some time. When he withdrew them, he had apparently recovered.

"Sorry about the ice cream," he said.

Hermione stared.

He nodded to the pile of papers on her desk. "Can I help?"

Ever obliging, she handed him a generous sheaf. She _did_ aim to please, after all. Especially when aiming to please entailed less drudgery for her.

A few minutes later, he said, "Can I have some paper?"

"What for?" Hermione asked.

"To write back."

Somehow, that had never really occurred to her. She just read them, summarized them meticulously, and gave the summaries to the people for whom they were meant.

She passed Malfoy a bit of paper and a pen, and he was off, scribbling industriously.

Shortly, he passed the paper back, and now it was covered in a blue-inked, untidy scrawl.

_Dear Whiny Bitch,_ it began.

_I regret to inform you that your worthless complaint to the Ministry was forwarded to the Department of Abrasive Sarcasm. The bad news is, we will be using your letter as a template for how _not_ to write. The good news is, we all had a damn good laugh at your expense._

_To make some sort of token effort to address your invalid and, furthermore, incredibly stupid concern, no, the Ministry is not ineffectual. Rather, _you_ are ineffectual. In addition, you seem to be incapable of sustaining a flow of decent and comprehensible English for more than a sentence and a half. I would direct you to the nearest kindergarten teacher, but upon meeting you, she would likely either (a) retire immediately, or (b) run screaming down the hall and throw herself out the first available window. In either case, you are clearly not worth it._

_However, we at the Ministry like to be as fair as possible, even to baboons who have somehow inexplicably gained a rudimentary ability to string words together, such as yourself. To that effect, please rest assured that the Ministry will attempt to ameliorate the situation as soon as possible._

_That means we'll try to fix it, if you were wondering._

_Now you can shut the Hell up and get back to figuring out which end of the banana is easier to peel._

_Sincerely,_

_Hayden U. Becauseyourestupid_

Hermione laughed so hard that people started to stare again.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Five o'clock came remarkably fast.

"I'm going to see if I can snag another free frozen yogurt before we go, if that's all right with you," Malfoy remarked. When Hermione offered her acquiescence, he strolled away in the direction of the cafeteria.

Just as Hermione finished packing up her things and was standing by her desk to wait for Malfoy, the Hesperides descended.

"You still haven't told us his name," the brunette persisted.

"He's _living _with you, right?" the blonde one squeaked.

"How _deliciously_ scandalous," the redhead purred.

Hermione's hand crawled across the desk behind her, searching for her letter opener.

"Yes, well," she began futilely. "You know."

"But we _don't_," the blonde cried.

"Enlighten us, won't you?" The brunette raised sculpted eyebrows, the corners of her perfect lips curling upwards.

The redhead nodded emphatically.

"Um," Hermione started. They focused on her intently, all wide, mascara-fringed eyes and rapt attentions.

Then, quite without warning, they were focusing on something over her shoulder.

Hermione's skin tingled as Malfoy wrapped his arm around her waist. Graciously he smiled at the trio of gawking girls.

"Terribly sorry to interrupt this worthwhile conversation, ladies," he said, "but Hermione and I have other…" He paused deliberately and held it out. "_Activities_… planned."

The stares became a little more astonished, a hot blush burst like fireworks in Hermione's cheeks, and Malfoy winked at the girls and steered her out of the Ministry building. Only when they were safely outside did he release her.

"Sorry about that," he commented airily. "Figured it would shut them up for a bit."

Hermione tried to reply and found that her voice was not cooperating. She settled with nodding. Nodding was a good start.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hermione was ready to do some laundry. She was ready to do that laundry _real_ good. She was going to show that laundry who was _boss_. She was going to make that laundry wish it had never been _born_. She was going to _rock_ that laundry so hard its laundry _mother_ would feel it.

It was no use. Laundry was still boring.

The latest newspaper in his hands, Malfoy lay sprawled across the couch, Sparky curled up on his chest like a very large, prominent, and disturbingly furry tumor. Hermione paused on her way out. "I'm going to go do the laundry," she announced.

"Okay, great," Malfoy said without looking up.

Hermione turned away. The unconcerned nonchalance of it reminded her of things she was trying very hard to forget.

That was the thing about brains, she thought as she tramped her way down the stairs, the laundry bag bumping along behind her. You were stuck with yours for life, and there was nothing you could do to curb its fierce independence. Trying to focus on other things worked sometimes, but there was always a nagging voice in the back, taunting you mercilessly like a grade-school bully. No, the brain did what the brain wanted, and the brain had a bad sense of humor.

And if you beat it with a stick or kicked it, you just made things worse.

Obligingly, one of the ancient washing machines on the ground floor ate her coins and proceeded to soak her—and Malfoy's—clothes with soapy water.

Hermione watched the maelstrom of spinning clothing for a few seconds before hopping up on top of the machine and perching there. It was what she usually did. Sitting atop the thrumming contraption was reasonably similar to reclining in one of those massage chairs they had at the mall, except that this, omitting the cost of the laundry, was completely free. Hermione had taken a liking to free things. They made you feel like you were doing something intelligent—or even getting away with something.

Well, for someone like Hermione, they did, anyway.

The clothes were halfway done in the dryer when Malfoy walked into the laundry room, climbed up onto the bank of machines, and sat next to Hermione.

"So," he said.

"So," she replied slowly, utterly unaware of what it was supposed to mean.

"Good," Malfoy decided. He jumped down, straightened the piteous, much-abused jeans that served him as pajama pants, and wandered away.

Hermione stared after him bewilderedly. Draco Malfoy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, liberally coated with puzzle, sprinkled with a bit of conundrum, with a riddle on top.

Plus he was just bloody insane.

As she wrangled the heaps of warm clothes out of the dryer, Hermione reflected that she wasn't really one to talk about being bloody insane, given that she had just elaborately compared a human being to an ice cream sundae.

How deliciously scandalous.


	10. Of Exorcisms and Fire Escapes

_Author's Note: Do I really give love a bad name, Jon Bon Jovi? Do I _really

_By the way, I've never been to Europe, much less England, so if Wikipedia lied to me about the way that British grocery stores are set up, I apologize for my cultural illiteracy. In my mind, their supermarket is basically the Nob Hill near my house. But I digress._

_It seems my lovely reviewers are very concerned about ickle Ron and Harrykins. Never fear; they are spoken of in Chapter Twelve and appear in Chapter Fourteen. As for what occurs therein, you'll just have to wait and see._

* * *

Chapter Ten

Of Exorcisms and Fire Escapes

When Draco awoke Saturday morning, there was a cat on his windpipe. Even as he groped for his wand on the coffee table, however, the cat relocated itself to his face, then his hair, then the arm of the couch.

Draco brushed gray fur off of the bridge of his nose. Then he brushed gray fur off of his mouth, his forehead, and his shirt. Then he got up and went to the kitchen, because that was where the refrigerator lived out its blessed existence.

Hermione was already up and sipping tea. Having gotten a bit of a feel for the way Hermione Granger approached food, Draco was utterly unsurprised to see a telltale teabag lying on a saucer nearby, still dripping feebly. Fighting down the urge to salute it and start talking about sacrifices made in the name of truth, justice, honor, and thirstiness, Draco went and buried his head in the fridge.

There was no more orange juice, and very little of anything else that looked even remotely edible, other than the leftover pizza.

"Hermione," he said.

"Mm?"

"We have a mission."

"And what's that?"

"To exorcise the demons in your refrigerator."

The evil salsa and the stomach-turning casserole were still very much in evidence. Draco dumped the salsa out in the trash, rinsed out the jar, and set it on the counter next to the orange juice container, which still hadn't found its way into a recycling bin. He followed it up with some long-expired mayonnaise and green applesauce. Applesauce, as every good Refrigerator Exorcist knows, should never, ever, _ever_ be green.

The casserole put up more of a fight. First of all, it was sprouting white _and_ black mold, which screamed "unhealthy" at a volume of about eighty decibels; and second of all, it had glued itself to the dish. Draco had to enlist a spatula, a fork, and two serving spoons to prise it off, at which point the majority of it slopped its way into the trash can to join its infernal brethren. Then there was some severe scrubbing to be done to rid the dish of the last of the crusty stragglers.

"_In the name of God, I banish you_!" Draco howled, scouring furiously.

"I have neighbors, you know," Hermione remarked.

"_In the name of God, I banish those neighbors_!"

"I don't know why I talk to you."

"Much as I dote on you, Hermy, darling," Draco rejoined, "I must have silence if I am to best this particular specimen of Hell-spawn."

"It's a _casserole dish_."

"It's a _Hell-spawn_ casserole dish."

When the good fight had been fought and all the fiends had made a forced migration to the bottom of the trashcan, Draco wiped the sweat from his virtuous brow and surveyed the conquered refrigerator in triumph.

His triumphant smile faded fast. There was nothing left in the fridge.

"I have a new idea even more brilliant than the last idea," he declared.

Hermione's eyebrows rose. "Oh?"

"Let's go grocery shopping."

Hermione sighed. But she went and got her coat anyway.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Resolutely they set off through the labyrinthine aisles of the supermarket, Draco pushing the cart and pointing Hermione in all directions to retrieve various edibilities.

Draco knew "edibilities" wasn't any more of a word than "enigmaticness" had been, but it still sounded good. If Draco wrote the dictionaries, he decided, the world would be a much more fantabulousiriffic place.

"Oh, get one of those," he told Hermione, indicating the re-zip-able bags of pre-shredded lettuce. "We can have a taco night. _Una fiesta_!"

It was the perfect opportunity for her to inquire crisply just how long he thought he would be staying. (It wasn't even staying. It was _freeloading_.) But she didn't say anything.

Well, nothing other than, "You are _un idiota_" as she tossed a package of lettuce into the cart.

_Idiota_ though he may have been, Draco could quite clearly see that they would be eating a lot better in the future.

Everything was going absolutely splendidly until Hermione stopped short and whispered urgently, "Oh, _no_. Run, run, run, _run_!"

Before Draco could so much as _budge_ the overflowing shopping cart, a tiny old woman with huge glasses settled among the folds of her face came toddling speedily towards them, a shopping basket swinging from her stick-like arm.

"Hermione, dear!" the woman piped happily. "My, you look well. I always told my sons, 'If you look well, you'll feel well,' but they didn't listen to Mummy; oh, no." Her wide, watery blue eyes lighted on Draco. "Oh, and you've brought along a little boyfriend!"

"Er, he's n—" Hermione began.

"What a charming boy!" the woman enthused, beaming brightly as she adjusted her glasses to peer at Draco more intently. "Just the kind of strong, commanding man you need in your life, dear—just perfect for you! Haven't I been telling you all along? Didn't I say, 'Hermione, dear, get yourself a big, tall, put-together fellow, and you'll be all set to start your little family'? I did; I did! Are you engaged yet?"

"Er, n—"

"Wonderful, wonderful!" She looked at Hermione very seriously. "Now, dear, if your mother hasn't got a wedding dress for you already, you're perfectly welcome to use mine. Beautiful old thing, it is; perfectly preserved, too. Oh, it'd fit you nicely; I was a sprightly young thing once, too, just like yourself!" Richly, she chuckled, and Draco, with some difficulty, swallowed a tremendous smile at the helplessly embarrassed blush that was spreading over Hermione's cheeks. "Well, I'd best be getting along, dear," the woman sang. "These old bones don't like to stay out so long anymore. I tell you, I'd give my right leg—" She pointed a finger at the limb in question for emphasis. "—to be young again." She glanced at Draco and then added in a loud whisper to Hermione, "And I'd give the other for a night with your little gentleman there, don't doubt it!" In a normal voice, she concluded, "I'd best be off! You two have a very _nice_, _long_ night, won't you?" She winked broadly and gave a girlish giggle, then waved and started off down the aisle.

"Mrs. Lychorida Bolton," Hermione explained dryly. "One of the neighbors you banished this morning. You might have banished her farther. Like to Antarctica."

Mrs. Lychorida Bolton turned back towards them. "Don't forget to use protection!" she called.

Draco had time to notice that Hermione's entire face was being consumed by a great, glorious red blush before he was bent over the handle of the shopping cart laughing.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Fairly late the next morning, as Draco skewered his last piece of pancake and finished ensuring that there were no new horrors lurking in the newspaper, the phone rang. Hermione had been reading the comics, so there was a smile on her face and in her voice as she picked up.

"Hello?"

Then the smile disappeared, to be replaced by pure terror.

"_Mother_?" Hermione Granger whispered. There was a pause. "Well—well, yes, it's wonderful to hear from you, too—What? A visit? That would be—" Her voice squeaked. "—lovely! When were you think—" Her voice squeaked even more pronouncedly. "_Today_? No, no, that'd be fine! Just fine, perfectly fine, perfectly wonderful, perfectly—What? You're _where_?" There was another pause. After it, Hermione's voice was so squeaky as to very nearly escape the range of human hearing. "In the _parking lot_?" The next few words came out as a single, elongated, mortified squeal. "Yes-that's-fine-that's-great-no-problem-no-problem-at-all!" Hermione sucked in a deep, deep breath, and then her voice was steady. "Only don't take the elevator," she said levelly. "It's broken. Use the stairs… Yes, seventy-eight, that's right. All right, see you in a few." She set the phone in the cradle. There was a moment of calm. Then came the storm.

Draco slammed his dishes into the sink, whisked tap water over them, and jammed them in the dishwasher, safely out of sight. Together he and Hermione raced into the living room, where she bunched up his sheets and went tearing off somewhere to hide them; for his part, he shoved all his belongings back into his bag and kicked it under the couch. Hermione dashed into the bathroom to straighten her clothes and comb her hair, and Draco slipped in behind her to snatch his razor off of the counter. He kicked that under the couch, too, though he supposed that wasn't entirely safe, and grabbed his wand from the table.

Hermione was back by then, wringing her hands and looking around desperately. "Where can we hide you, where can—"

There was a knock at the door.

"The fire escape!" Hermione gasped. "_Coming_!" she called in the direction of the door as she dragged Draco into the kitchen, yanked the window open, and shoved him out of it.

He would have been more than a little miffed if he'd fallen to his death, but instead he landed on a steel platform. There was a ladder leading down and a stairway leading up. By the time he'd gained his feet, Hermione was already opening the door, so he crept partway up the stairs and settled as comfortably as possible.

Muffled voices reached his ears, becoming clearer as their owners came into the kitchen.

"_No_," Hermione was saying, "I'm _not_, and, at this juncture of my life, I don't think I need to be just yet."

Draco wondered if the question had been "married" or "pregnant." It was a toss-up.

"And you've got a window open?" a woman's voice tutted. "You'll catch your death of cold that way, sweetheart; we should visit more often to make sure you're—"

"Just getting a little air," Hermione interrupted. "And now there's plenty, so—"

The window slammed shut.

Draco reclined on the stairs. They were cold. So was the air. Maybe Mrs. Granger was on to something.

He took out his wand and conjured some bluebell flames, which he set on the step below him so that he could rub his hands before them. With his extraordinary powers of perception, he was foreseeing that it was going to be a long, long, long, long day.

His extraordinary powers of perception had no idea.

The sun had begun to set by the time the window creaked open again. Dark, angry, dreadfully ominous clouds were massing on the horizon, and the fiery orb tainted them pink and orange and violet. Draco had been entertaining the disconcerting notion that he had put his nose down somewhere and left it, because he was sure he hadn't been able to feel it for a good five hours.

"Draco?" came the prompt.

Gratefully, if not very gracefully, he clambered back into the warm kitchen. His extremities tingled.

"I'm so, so, so, so sorry," Hermione was moaning, sounding close to tears. "I tried to get rid of them, but they wouldn't _go_."

"Don't mention it," he told her, cheerfully enough given the circumstances. He meant it, too. Just thinking about _it_ made him shiver all over again.

Immediately, he trooped to the fridge and examined its contents. He was glad they—or, rather, _she_—had bought such a ridiculous amount of food yesterday. He was starved. He wished they—or rather, _she_—had bought some beer, too, but he had realized even then that such an act would give Lychorida Bolton very, very, _very_ bad ideas.

Well, slightly worse ideas than the ones she already had.


	11. A Dark and Stormy Night

_Author's Note: Oh, the tributes that appear in this chapter._

_Incidentally, I just want to say how ridiculously pleased and flattered I am that so many people are enjoying this fic. The compliments I get on the story, the characters, my style, and even my punctilious (to the point of being somewhat laughable) attention to grammar and spelling really make it all worthwhile. This is by far the best reception anything of mine has ever gotten, and I have you all to thank. So thank you. Unfortunately, some of the coming chapters (including, to some degree, this one) are almost… um… serious. My apologies for that._

_Actually, looking at it, it's only Thirteen that's bad. I must have been having an Emo Day. And Sixteen makes me want to hide under a rock._

_Just a little preview of what you're in for._

* * *

Chapter Eleven

A Dark and Stormy Night

It was the raining when Hermione awoke. It was coming down in buckets and pails and bathtubs and swimming pools, and it pounded at the building and pattered on the windows with a thousand insistent fingers.

Hermione looked blearily at her alarm clock, which proclaimed in violent red letters that it was a quarter to seven. She managed to slam her hand down on it on the second try, and it ceased to blare at her petulantly. Mumbling to herself about Monday mornings, she rolled out of bed and went in search of some clothes.

When she entered the kitchen twenty minutes later, Malfoy was wolfing down something that looked remarkably colorful for cold cereal.

"Are those _marshmallows_?" she asked in surprise.

"Mankind's third-greatest invention," he told her between heaping, dripping spoonfuls. "After fire and the bikini."

She made herself some toast. It was almost strange to be able to butter it.

There was also apple juice, orange juice, and mango-banana-papaya juice. Hermione wasn't even quite sure what a papaya _was_, so she went with apple. Maybe papaya was a tropical poison inserted into juices and then shipped to unsuspecting Britons who never knew what killed them.

The weather was so abysmally bad that even though they Apparated to the plaza just outside the Ministry, Malfoy and Hermione did so huddled under her old black umbrella. Hermione didn't really mind. Huddling with Malfoy was not at all unpleasant. He smelled nice.

It was very odd to realize that a few days ago, she would have slapped herself right across the face for that. Maybe even in public.

Just before they reached the door, Malfoy paused.

"If… it isn't a problem with you," he said slowly, "I think I might like to take the job Helicane was offering." He looked at his shoes. Wind batted the umbrella, and the rain rapped on it numbingly, but Hermione didn't move. "I really don't like relying on you," Malfoy went on quietly. "It isn't that I don't think you're capable of sustaining us both—though I think it does stretch your means, which isn't fair at all—so much as that it's just not _right_ for me to take so much advantage of your generosity without contributing anything myself."

Over the course of the last few less-than-restful nights, Hermione had let scenarios play out in her wakeful mind, and this one had been among their number. Much as she wanted to sit down on the wet pavement, flail her limbs, and bawl her eyes out, it was time to step up and be an adult.

She took a deep breath. "That's not a problem," she said, and she almost believed it.

Malfoy smiled at her, and she knew she'd done something right.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Mondays were always the hardest, and Hermione was glad to get back to good old Number 78, where she could kick off her shoes and forget for a few hours about letters that openly mocked all precepts of grammar and spelling. And, small as it was, said apartment was warmer, cozier, and nicer by far with two people in it. Sparky was good company, but he couldn't exactly hold up a conversation. Or ask to borrow your perfume.

She and Malfoy both dropped into the chairs at the table where Hermione had sat facing her mother just the day before. Marina Irving Granger had gone on for many, many hours about life goals, the pursuit of happiness, and what 'real joy' meant (though she hadn't clarified what fake joy was supposed to be). She had also updated her daughter on the doings of every member of the extended family, including a list of recent marriages so lengthy that Hermione suspected it was largely fabricated. Hermione, for her part, had taken a lot of furtive glances at the window hoping that no part of Malfoy was showing through it.

And now she was here, sitting across from her old enemy and enjoying it immensely.

The quiescence lasted a few minutes until she meditated a bit too intently on the "old enemy" part.

After all, it was a dark and stormy night. Thunder growled around the building, and gusts of wind slapped rain at the windowpane she'd watched so carefully the afternoon before. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she had to find out.

Despite the fact that Hermione was of the opinion that fidgeting indicated indecision, she drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "It's been three years since I've seen you," she declared slowly, drawing Malfoy's attention away from the rocky road ice cream he was working on, "and a year and a half since the war officially ended. Where did you go?"

Given that she expected another bout of sensual interaction with an eating utensil, she was somewhat surprised when Malfoy set the spoon down and looked at it, his hands folded in his lap. Then he jumped right in, without so much as a preface. "When things really started heating up," he said quietly, "I realized that I wasn't ready to play in the big leagues—and that I never should have pretended that I could or wanted to. I wanted out. So my parents told me to run for it. I never thought they'd understand, but…" Helplessly he shrugged. "I guess they were better people than I realized—stronger, too.

"I went and took some money out—directly out of Gringotts; our bills were being watched—and set myself up in a townhouse in the city. Settled down a little bit, tentatively, and went and tried to get a job. The transition was… not as easy as I might have hoped. Of course, I was an idiot even to hope that it would be, but that's never stopped me. I didn't have a résumé—or even a high school diploma—to go on, so everything rode on my being charming enough to nail the interviews. And when I did finally get a job, by which time the Gringotts money was running thin—getting food was quickly becoming an exercise in calculations—I didn't have any job skills. I ended up as a waiter. It made me uncomfortable, because I was so out in the open, but once I figured out how the system worked and leaned on the expertise of a few female coworkers who were all too happy to oblige, I got good tips, and I couldn't afford to drop it for something new and unstable. It was good for me, too—having to wait on people, rather than the other way around. Having to count every pound to pay the rent. It wasn't easy, though.

"And then one afternoon, when I happened to be off, there was an extremely insistent knock at the door, and I went down to answer it. There were some kids next door and some other neighbors down the street, neither of which I was keen on interacting with, so I'd taken to looking through the peephole. It saved my life, since Arturo Leonine was the one doing the knocking. I'd heard the war was over, but I wasn't dumb enough to think that it was over for good. Especially not for the fools who quit in the middle. The survivors of a war like that aren't going to take kindly to the old deserters. Likely Leonine blames people like me for the fact that they lost—they were down a few. He hadn't seen me, but I wasn't sure if he'd heard me, so I ran upstairs, threw the important stuff together, and Apparated as far as I could think to go.

"Landed in a Dumpster. That was unpleasant. Hadn't thought that one through very well.

"After I got the banana peels and fish-heads off, I took to the road. Couldn't stay in one place. Tried to lodge with some charitable people I managed to charm into it while I was sitting next to them in a Muggle church—great places to hide; churches—but before too long, Leonine was at the door again. I kept going. Slept on some doorsteps and in some alleys, befriended some hobos. Down-and-out people like me. It's been awhile, but Leonine's damn persistent. Dared to set foot in London again, had him onto me in minutes, and slipped into Diagon Alley for a few hours looking for a nice crowd to melt into. Picked up a _Prophet_ and saw your name—bit of work with Muggle integration, wasn't it? Soften the edges where our world juts into theirs? Said you made a nice speech. And I thought, 'Hermione Granger. Hermione Granger might be able to keep me safe for a day or two. And wouldn't it be nice to have a day or two of peace?'" He smiled the old, lazy Malfoy smile, which looked out of place now—like a pink satin bow on a war monument. "Of course, we managed to get attacked within the first twenty minutes, but I suppose twenty minutes of peace is a nice little bit. Beggars can't be choosy and all of that."

"What about your parents?" Hermione dared to interject.

The Malfoy smile faded, leaving behind a pensive face instead. "I don't know. We didn't stay in contact—for obvious reasons." He glanced at her. "Might you have heard anything, by any chance? Seen them wandering around the more affluent areas of London, arguing over what color to paint the dining room?"

Mutely, wishing she had an answer, Hermione shook her head.

"Ah, well," Malfoy noted. "I suppose we'll have to assume the worst."

Hermione cringed, and he saw it.

"That they've retired to southern France without me," he specified accordingly. Luxuriantly he stretched. "Must be nice down there this time of year. It's nice down there every time of year." He paused. "Why didn't I Apparate _there_?"

"Do you speak French?" Hermione had been reduced to the worst kind of conversational fisherman—the kind that cast out for anything, no matter how circumstantial.

"_Oui, bien sûr. Ma mère pensait qu'il est nécessaire qu'un jeune homme semble élégant._" He smiled at her confusion. "My mother was of the impression that sophisticated people did things like that. I had a French tutor for years."

"How… nice," she said helplessly. The bait was dead, and her line had snapped. "So… so…"

"Can I get you some hot chocolate?" Draco—yes, _Draco_; she was going to say it, and she was going to be okay with it—asked.

"Yes," she replied, seizing onto the change of subject. "Yes, _please_."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hermione stared at the ceiling as if the answers might appear upon it, written in flowing cursive in sparkly pink ink. They didn't.

As the rain gouged at the outer walls of a hellhole apartment building, Hermione Granger wished that she could stop tossing, turning, and agonizing and go to sleep. She knew that if she didn't, tomorrow she would be like something out of _Resident Evil_.

And work was evil enough by itself.


	12. Reactor Core Meltdown

_Author's Note: A dear and much-too-smart friend of mine noticed that you also fix lunch and dinner. I am choosing to pretend I never heard any such thing._

_Personally, I think the Magic 8 Ball bit is the funniest part of this entire story._

_Oh, and… show me a cat that obeys orders (as Sparky does within), and I will show you a dog in disguise. That's what we call "creative license."_

_And in response to saige, Chapter Ten _was_ kind of rushed. There was a lot I wanted to do in 2,000 words, and it got a little smushed. My bad. Or, as my Algebra 2 teacher used to say to mock people like me who say "my bad," my NOUN._

_And to Liz… my mom and my brother give me crap all the time about not being able to understand my writing. I'm afraid big words kind of wriggle their way in there, usually without my permission._

* * *

Chapter Twelve

Reactor Core Meltdown

The eggs were coming along nicely. Draco had just diced and added some ham when Hermione said, "Why don't you go to Gringotts?"

There was something tentative in the tone of her voice that reassured him that she hadn't meant it as an accusation. "Because," he answered evenly, "I doubt that there's anything there. If my parents did escape to the Continent—which I think is very likely—they'd have been wise to convert every last Knut to a Euro and take it all along."

He glanced at her where she sat with her hands folded on the table, and the light of comprehension was in her eyes. Hermione was quicker to understand than sharks were to follow the scent of blood through the water, quicker than the brief sprint of a cheetah or the solid snap of an alligator's jaws.

He wondered offhandedly if maybe—just _maybe_—he'd been watching a few too many nature shows.

"Can I do anything to help?" she asked, nodding to their prospective breakfast.

Draco paused. She looked like she hadn't slept at all, though her eyes were as bright as ever, and if he put her up to anything strenuous, she might well collapse on the floor and start mumbling nonsense words that would summon archaic evils. And then Draco would _really_ have to exorcise something.

"Could you send reinforcements to the beverage front?" he inquired.

Hermione obliged. "Would you like apple, orange, or mango-banana-papaya?"

"Hit me up with some M.B.P." He tried not to giggle. It sounded like a drug.

"Your death warrant," Hermione noted calmly.

"I like to live dangerously," Draco declared. There was a pause as they both remembered that he didn't—not in the slightest. He liked to live nicely, warmly, quietly, and peacefully. He probably would have been up for returning to the womb if such a thing were possible.

"You know," he commented after a moment of silence, "isn't it interesting how you _fix_ breakfast? Since it has the word 'break' in it? Funny, huh?"

Raptly Hermione looked at him. "I _never_ noticed that," she said slowly.

"Me neither," Draco replied. He arranged half the eggs on each of the two plates and then grated some cheddar cheese over them. He handed Hermione her portion.

"You," she told him, "are a certified Breakfast Repairman."

"And a Refrigerator Exorcist," Draco reminded her. "I'm a man of many talents."

_One of which, _he added mentally, _is throwing women on the floor and ravishing—_

"Glad to hear it," Hermione rejoined crisply.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

At ten minutes to five, Helicane bustled out of his office, saying he was in the mood for a spot of tea; would Ardoc Olyfam like any?

Draco figured that someone with a name like Ardoc Olyfam would only drink tea if it was spiked with vodka, but instead of saying so, he politely declined.

At two minutes to five, the phone rang. Draco, who had been watching the second-hand of the clock intently, cursed under his breath. It was going to be a client, and said client was going to keep him tied up for the next thirty-five minutes bleating about this service or that problem—

"Hello?" he said, forcing himself to sound kind and open-minded.

"Helicane there?" a low voice on the other end inquired peremptorily.

"I'm afraid not, sir; can I take a message?"

"Yes," the man responded curtly. "Tomorrow. Eight o'clock. The usual."

Chewing his lip, Draco jotted it down, word for word. It wasn't difficult. There were only five words to it.

"Will that be all, si—?"

There was a _click_ as the man hung up.

Draco's eyes darted to the clock. It was thirty seconds to five, and Helicane himself was nowhere in sight.

Sighing as he looked at the hardly-legible note on the Ministry letterhead, Draco picked it up and stumped into Helicane's office. All he had to do was leave the note on his boss's desk, and then he could get the Hell out of here and go pet Sparky until they both fell asleep on the couch. All he had to do was focus, ignore all distractions, set it down, and leave, and—

There was a Magic 8 Ball on Helicane's desk, nestled between an ostentatious statuette of a horseman (his sword looked to be a letter opener) and a small potted cactus (which looked to be dying).

It took some real skill to kill a cactus. Or some absolutely inhuman breath.

Draco plucked the 8 Ball free and brushed a bit of dust off of its shiny black exterior. It was random. It was plastic. It was a toy.

He shook it anyway.

"Does Hermione Granger want to throw me on the floor and ravish me?" he whispered furiously, close enough for the Fantastic Powers within the orb to hear.

He turned it over and looked in the window.

_My sources say no._

"Well, your sources are bloody _wrong_, you lying piece of _shi_—"

The door started to open, and Draco shoved the 8 Ball back into its place and folded his hands innocently behind his back.

"Oh, hello, Ardoc," Helicane boomed pleasantly. "What can I do for you?"

"Just a little note for you, sir." Draco thrust it out towards Helicane, willing the man not to see the bit of a blush he was battling. He was also fighting the urge to snatch up the offending 8 Ball, hurl it to the ground, and stomp upon it vigorously.

Helicane took the slip of paper, scanned it, and nodded. "Very good, very good." He grinned. "And none of that 'sir' business, my dear boy. _Do_ call me Giles."

"All right… Giles," Draco acquiesced awkwardly.

"You've done excellent work these first two days," Helicane declared. "Truly excellent work. I expect you'll get even better as you go along." Elaborately, his capacious stomach swelling even more, he yawned. "I'll be heading home quite soon, though, Ardoc, my boy, and I'm sure you're ready to do the same."

"Of course, si—Giles," Draco acceded again. That was how he'd landed this job in the first place—by being agreeable.

"There's a good boy. See you bright and early tomorrow, Ardoc."

"Goodbye, Giles," Draco replied. Then he escaped out the door to collect Hermione.

Hermione was already waiting to collect him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

They were sitting idly on the couch after dinner when Draco's curiosity got the better of him.

"Whatever happened to Ron?" he asked. Seemed like an innocent question. He hadn't seen the Weasel weaseling about anywhere, and it made him wonder a bit.

Unexpectedly, and quite without warning, Hermione Granger exploded into tears.

"There was this _girl_!" she cried. "Everything was _fine_, until there was this _girl_! She was tall, and tan, and she had hair like rippling waves of golden wheat and eyes like the purest Caribbean waters—" Draco supposed he couldn't expect her descriptive facilities to be particularly good when she was having an emotional breakdown. "—and she wore a black miniskirt—" This was getting worse and worse. "—and she had huge—huge—you _know_—" Draco knew. "—and she thought Ron was this big _hero_, and at first he was trying to ignore her, only then he _didn't_, and then he _dumped_ me, and I was _mortified_, and Harry was trying to be an intermediary—" Only Hermione Granger would use the word 'intermediary' at a time like this. "—only now they're getting _married_—" Draco used his extraordinary intuitive powers to deduce that she meant Ron and the girl, rather than Ron and Harry. "—and he asked Harry to be his best man, and now _neither_ of them is talking to me, and—and—_I—hate—boys_!"

The conclusion needed a little work, but then again, the girl was pretty distraught.

"Hey," Draco said. It sounded like a reasonable thing to say. "Don't forget to breathe." He drew a large, dark green handkerchief from his pocket like a cheap magician and pressed it into her hands. Immediately she had buried her face in it. "It's going to be okay." He took a brown blanket off of the back of the couch and laid it over her legs. "I'll make sure of it." He saw the crippled cat wandering around by the television set and whistled sharply. "Sparky," he said commandingly. He pointed imperiously at the space next to Hermione on the couch. The cat hobbled over and made an obedient, if ungainly, leap onto the couch, where he curled up against Hermione's thigh. "Now, hold that thought," he instructed.

He stood, slipped into the kitchen, and opened the freezer. There were ice cube trays, frozen peas that had seen better days, frozen carrots that were faring about as well, and, in the very back, a pint of vanilla ice cream. (He should have exorcised the freezer, too, he reflected.) He pulled the lid off of the ice cream, stuck a spoon in it, and returned to the living room to place the prize on the coffee table.

"No double-whip fudge brownie, I'm afraid," he remarked. He didn't add that he had eaten it all. Didn't seem tactful. Rather, seemed suicidal.

Hermione hiccupped forlornly and clung to the handkerchief.

"Here," Draco offered. Taking the ice cream carton in one hand and the spoon in the other, he scooped up a little and put it out for her. "Here comes the airplane?" he attempted hesitantly.

The ice cream disappeared as if a crocodile had surged out of the murky waters and felled a zebra pausing to drink.

Damn those nature shows. Damn them all.

"Good," Draco said. "Very good."

When the ice cream was gone, Hermione was still breathing a little unevenly. "I'm sorry," she managed weakly. "Going on and blubbering like this—"

"'Blubber' makes me think of whales," Draco noted. (He was going to _sue_ whoever had started that kind of programming, damn it. Damn _it_ and damn _them_. While he was at it, damn _everyone_.)

Well, damn everyone except Hermione. She had enough problems.

"And you are categorically not a whale," he concluded. "Rather, you are a human being who has been treated badly, and you have every right to do as you're doing."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"How do you know?"

"Um, magic."


	13. Pretty Little Lies

_Author's Note: This fic has over a hundred reviews. You know how happy I am? Happy. Really happy. Unbelievably happy. Thank you all._

_Yeah, what this chapter lacks in funniness, it makes up for in… um… unrealistic dialogue…_

_Cue the Emo Song._

* * *

Chapter Thirteen

Pretty Little Lies

Somehow, Hermione endured until Friday. She really wasn't sure how. Maybe she had some vast untapped reserves of survival abilities that she hadn't previously known about.

Or maybe she was just wasting her life hunched over the latest illiterate letter, and she was so conditioned to it that the weekend didn't even feel like freedom anymore. It felt like a breath of air, yes, but not like a two-day reprieve. Last weekend certainly hadn't been much of a reprieve. Her mother was almost as extraordinarily talented at making her feel like a failure as Helicane was.

Speaking of Helicane, there were so many damn complaint letters that she was beginning to suspect that he wrote some of them himself.

All in all, it just felt like there was a lead weight on her head that wouldn't go away. It was slowly crushing her into the floor.

As she kicked off her heels shortly after crossing the threshold of Number 78, her feet made a vociferous testimony in favor of the lead weight explanation of things.

The moment Draco got home, he put on his pajamas—which meant his bloodstained T-shirt and his liberally-ripped jeans. Those two articles of clothing—if they still entirely qualified as _clothing_ after the beating they'd taken—were becoming very familiar around this place.

Hermione couldn't deny the sense of being comfortable, however. So it was that, right after dinner, she sought out her own pajamas, which consisted of a pair of drawstring pants that were sky blue (with white clouds) and a cotton long-sleeved shirt of a pastel purple. They didn't really match, to tell the truth, but Hermione didn't exactly make a point of showing them off or anything. She glanced in the mirror. For one thing, she looked about twelve dressed this way, and for another, the circles under her eyes and the great untamed mass of her hair made her look dead.

So she was a dead twelve-year-old. Fan-frigging-tastic.

Dragging a brush through her hair helped a little, but not much. She washed her face to rinse off the last of that stuffy-office-feeling, and then she went to go sit uselessly on the couch until her exhaustion metamorphosed into sleepiness.

Except that Draco was draped all the way over it.

He turned in time to see her face fall, and he frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"There isn't anything wrong."

"Fat chance of that."

Hermione wanted to die. Her weight. One more thing to agonize about late into nights she couldn't afford to spend agonizing. All that _ice cream_ yesterday…

She turned away from him and looked at the floor. There, like a dead animal in the middle of the road, was a single white sock, and she remembered another thing she had blissfully forgotten for a few wonderful minutes.

"I'm going to go do the laundry," she said quietly. Even so she heard the tremor in her own voice.

"Forget the damn laundry," Draco told her.

He crept up behind her and slipped his arms around her shoulders. His voice trickled into her ear like clear stream water down a parched throat.

"You are beautiful," he whispered, a finger rising to brush her cheek, softer than a breath of wind. "You are kind, and intelligent, and bursting at the seams with unshakeable conviction, and therein you are _beautiful_. Maybe you don't have burgeoning feminine curves and voluminous gold tresses. But I think that's because whatever sort of Creator there is up there knew that you wouldn't need them." He drew her in closer, and she could feel his heartbeat against her back, hammering hard despite the even tone of his voice. "Let me hold you. Let me kiss you. Let me prove to you that I believe it."

"And?" she said.

"'And'?" he prompted, admirably calmly.

"And what shall I give you in return for your pretty little lies?" It was a defense mechanism, and she knew it. But it went against everything in her nature to walk into a dark room without her wand raised and her eyes wide open, just in case. It wasn't in her to give up without a fight.

Draco's lips were right up against her ear now, and she felt them shift as he smiled. "You'll throw me on the floor and ravish me," he told her equably.

She pulled away from his chest, disentangling his arms from around her, stepped away, and turned to look at him. There was surprise on his face, and bewilderment, and a bit of hurt. All of it disappeared instantaneously when she said what she said next.

"Take off your shirt," she ordered.

Grinning now, he peeled it off, slowly and distinctly for her benefit, and then dropped it to the floor. He looked good, that much was undeniable; but, as she'd expected, he was a little too thin to be quite breathtaking. There was a raggedness to him, almost palpable in his bearing and the tiny trace of weariness in his smile. He was worn, he was wretched, and he was tired of running.

And—

Hermione released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Everywhere on the pale skin they crawled, varied and enterprising—scars. Scars, and marks, and countless calling cards of old wounds. There were faint welts halfway-healed, broad bruises gone a sickly, fading yellow, and white, ropy scars like tapeworms.

"This one was there before." Draco had seen her mortified, pitying, desperate fascination and was pointing to a short, unobtrusive white line that curved below his collarbone. "From the good old days, messing around at home as a kid." He found a different one. "That one, too. But this one…" He turned his back to her and pointed to a thick scar that arched over his shoulder. "_Sectumsempra_ from Leonine. Hit me in the back while I was running. Guess I was just damn lucky it wasn't anything more potent."

He faced her again, and Hermione looked at him. She wasn't thinking, because if she started thinking now, her brain would explode, and that would be Hell to get out of the carpet. So instead of letting her brain wrap its great girth around anything—anything at all—she stepped forward and kissed the first scar, and then the second, and then the third, softly and carefully and tenderly.

"This was more of his work… And here… I don't think he thought I was alive after this, but you know me; I'm pretty persistent when it comes to doing what'll piss people off most…" He was rambling a little, talking too much. It was because he was slightly disconcerted. Come to think of it, Hermione was pretty disconcerted, too.

No thinking about it. That would be the end of her. And the end of her carpet.

"Here I think I just crashed into a pole while walking… Here's next… and then here…" Methodically, she touched her lips to every one. "This one—I tried to beg money off the wrong guy. I guess he was just having a bad day. I could've hexed him, but I couldn't _leave_ him that way—I don't know how to wipe memories… Then here—and here. And here."

It took maybe a few minutes for him to find them all and explain them all away as if they didn't hurt and never had, as if they'd disappear when he waved his wand and snapped his fingers, but however many tangents he traveled, it was a terribly long time to be listing old injuries.

Hesitantly he stopped. "And… that's everything."

That wasn't true. Hermione knew precisely where the most recent wound resided.

Accordingly, she pushed herself up on her toes and kissed his lip.

He was momentarily taken aback—but then he recovered.

And what a recovery it was. His fingers slipped into her hair, his fingernails skimming her scalp and sending goosebumps rolling down her arms; for the space of a second he cupped her cheek in his free hand, but then his palm brushed her neck, her shoulder, her side; his kiss was at once warm and soft and desolate and hungry. He pulled her closer even as he pressed himself on her, and again she felt his heart pounding—matched beat for slamming beat by hers.

He drew away, panting, and his gray eyes blazed—with elation, with vindication, with triumphant joy. Levelly she met his gaze, as much enraptured as she was appalled. It felt strange—being utterly at odds with yourself. She had been neatly bifurcated. The sensible half of her told her to bitch-slap the shirtless young man with his hand set calmly on the small of her back immediately. (Or at _least_ at the soonest possible convenience.) But the other half—the lonely, empty, hollow half, the half that lurked in corners and huddled under the blankets, the half that pulsated gently in the shadows, giving off a faint blood-red luminescence that coaxed her down towards the darkness in which it dwelled, wanted her to forget that broken hearts couldn't be mended. It wanted her to forget that Ron had moved on and was never coming back; it wanted her to forget that he'd had every reason to do so; it wanted her to forget that Draco Malfoy was a cad and a child at turns; it wanted her to forget that she felt shattered and stranded at the best of times. It wanted her to forget everything—everything that existed in a mad world—and bury herself in Draco until some unspecified time when she had no choice but to remember.

Before she could find a happy medium (she hated picking sides, even of herself; someone always lost and went off to sulk somewhere), Draco moved again, ever the striking serpent one step—or one slither—ahead of its prey.

Once more he kissed her, deeply and fully and meaningfully, and very likely with just about everything in him. His hands were warm, and her eyes were closed, and she felt his fingers grasp the bottom hem of her shirt and tug gently upwards. And upwards. And upwards.

Tearing herself from his arms might well have been the hardest thing she'd ever done.

"What?" he gasped out, reaching for her again almost frantically.

Cautiously she backed out of range, feeling herself tremble, smoothing her shirt out again, imagining she could feel his warmth on the places he'd touched it. "I want to wait," she said.

His hands fell to his sides. His eyes probed her, searching, wary and weary and worried. Then he took a deep breath and put on a smile. "Okay," he said. "I'll wait."

And it was then that she knew that she had fallen in love with the right pompous, reckless, idiotic fool.


	14. Pals

_Author's Note: Aaaaaaaannnddd… GO._

_This is the best chapter in the whole fic, by the way. So SAVOR IT._

* * *

Chapter Fourteen

Pals

Saturday morning arrived and started to whittle down towards Saturday afternoon. Draco realized with an unplesant sinking feeling that he was beginning to get sedentary—to settle down and become accustomed to that feeling of lethargy, of quiet, warm contentment. Sitting-by-the-hearth syndrome.

It was all good and well until something downright nasty came roaring down the chimney, and your legs weren't good for running anymore.

And suddenly he itched for movement, craved it—not to get away so much as to get… around. Up, and out, and around.

"I'm going to take a walk, all right?" he told Hermione, popping into the kitchen.

Her brow knitted more deftly than a grandmother's hands. "I don't know if that's a good idea," she remarked slowly. "I mean, Leonine—"

He was already edging surreptitiously towards the door. "I've got my wits and my wand," he assured her. "They've taken me this far, and I think I've got a little dumb luck left."

Steady was her gaze upon him; piercing were her plain brown eyes. That was another reason he had to get a little air. You couldn't properly mull over people when they were sitting right next to you. That was fundamentally wrong—the way that the word "Gryffindor" inscribed on a House Cup was wrong. The way that a strikingly attractive Malfoy not getting some _action_ once in a while was wrong. The way that rain on the day of your birthday party was wrong, 'cause you were gonna hava clown anna pony anna slide anna bouncy house, anna… anna…

In other words, _wrong_.

"Don't be long," Hermione cautioned.

"Won't," Draco replied blithely. And then he was out the door and free.

It felt good to be out and about, to have the uneven cobblestones under his feet and the smog-tainted air in his lungs. No, it felt _wonderful_.

Briskly he strode down the avenue, feeling blood rise to his cheeks in the cold, the breeze toying fastidiously with his hair like an overbearing mother before the family picture. He poked around a thrift shop, just for the Hell of it. Sometimes there were gems to be found in such places, though he didn't exactly have any money. If any treasure surfaced, he'd have little choice but to drag Hermione back later.

Hermione. What to make of Hermione? He wasn't sure. And maybe… maybe that was all right.

A cloudless sky poured sunbeams on him, but the bitter chill murdered their mitigating warmth in the cradle. That was all right, too. Little cold never hurt anyone.

And it was nothing near as cold as his little fire escape escapade had been.

Nonetheless, Draco took to the sidewalk, closer to the humming heat that radiated outward from the storefronts. He peered through the window of some uppity restaurant as he passed and was surprised to see his own reflection. He looked poorer and shabbier and scrawnier than ever. A business like this one that would have ushered him in with the height of unctuousness once upon a time would turn him away now—eject him back onto the street the moment he set a scuffed shoe over their pristine threshold.

Suddenly he missed the old days, missed them fiercely. It hurt like Hell, being reduced to this, having to scrape his way by on nothing more than his charm and his brains and the skin of his teeth. Longing burst into flame in the pit of his empty stomach—for of course he hadn't been smart enough to get lunch before sauntering out on this little adventure—and worked its way up to a solid blaze. He wanted those things again, the things he saw in the heart of that fire—the banquets, the laziness, the sumptuousness and the prestige.

He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk, and it skittered away. On the upside, he reflected miserably, better a fire in his stomach than a fire under his ass.

He was just considering how his mood couldn't possibly get any worse when he looked up, and then it did.

Harry Potter and Satan—that was, Ron Weasley—were sitting at an outdoor table at the street-side café just feet away, holding up an amiable conversation bolstered by a variety of ostentatious hand gestures. Satan laughed, and Draco felt his hot blood cease to simmer and begin abruptly to boil.

In the blink of an eye, he had moved, and he found himself vaulting heedlessly over the low balustrade and pulling up a chair at their table. He would have cursed his father for bequeathing to him his whip-fast impetuousness, but he was quickly preoccupied with other matters.

Namely, how the Hell to explain himself.

"_Draco_?" Ron and Harry demanded in impressive synchronism.

"You look…" Harry began helplessly.

"Like something the cat dragged in," Ron finished, raising a ginger eyebrow.

Draco was not going to rise to that. There were more important things than his pride—for once in his pathetic _life_, there were more important things than his bloody _pride_.

"You bastard," he said, hoping that the venomous, go-in-for-the-kill calm he felt came through in the words. "You absolute _bastard_."

Ron stared. "What?" he managed.

Draco slapped a hand down on the table and gripped the edge so hard as to bleach the color from his knuckles. "I said, you are an unconscionable _bastard_."

A frown tugged at Ron's face. Draco memorized every line so that he could hate it more effectively later. "What are you even talking about?" Ron asked.

"_Hermione_," Draco hissed. As if there was anything else in the wide world! "You _broke_ her _heart_, you little—"

Ron sighed—right as he was working up to a nice tirade, too. Damn _Weasley_. They were always doing things like that—breaking hearts, interrupting good rants. Where was a good rodent exterminator when you needed one? "Look," Ron said. "Hermione's my pal. And I realized that it's better that wa—"

"If she's your _pal_," Draco sneered mercilessly, "then why haven't you talked to her in _months_?"

With all earnestness, Ron looked at him, his hands out peaceably, and Draco felt himself falter. "I tried!" Ron insisted. "At the beginning, when it was all messy and horrible, I tried all the time! But when she wouldn't return my calls and wouldn't return my letters and wouldn't so much as _acknowledge_ me, I gave up."

Draco stared at him. He had come here as a knight in shining armor, equipped with righteousness and justice. And he had just discovered that his sword was made of plastic, and his so-called principles were founded on a misconception.

"But…" he attempted hopelessly.

"I mean," Ron went on, "Hermione's a great friend. And she could always have been a great friend. But sometimes you've got to leave it at that, and this was one of those times. With Ilsa, it's different."

_Ilsa_. Draco tried to muster up some rage, but all of the power had gone out of him. He sympathized dearly with helium balloons, gradually having all the life _eee_ out of them from some small, insidious hole, leaving them flat and listless and all gross and wrinkly-looking.

Distractedly he prayed that at _least_ he wouldn't get all wrinkly.

"And when I agreed to be Ron's best man," Harry put in quietly, "she stopped talking to me, too." He paused and looked Draco up and down. Draco squirmed. Having Saint Potter give you the once-over was supremely disconcerting. "Wait," Harry Potter said, much too intelligently for Draco's liking. Just when you started to appreciate someone's tactful silence, they just _had_ to go and get all too-intelligent on you. "Does that mean you're staying with Hermione?"

"Um," Draco said. "Gotta' go." He vaulted back over the railing, patted it apologetically, and glanced once more at the two bewildered faces staring at him. "You have a nice lunch," he told them kindly.

"Draco—" There they went with that synchronism thing again. Just _creepy_.

But he was already off down the sidewalk, trying to get out of sight, turning a corner into an alley—

"_Sectumsempra_!"

Only pure chance as he twisted his ankle and stumbled sent the spell carving a bloody swath up the left side of his chest instead of straight through his face. Looked like he had just a little bit of dumb luck left after all.

But that didn't prevent him from tumbling to the ground with a scream.

The spurting blood had soaked his hands. Lightheaded, he fumbled for his wand with slippery fingers, waiting for the words, for the rush, for the endless darkness that would follow—

Helplessly he looked up into the shadow cast by the hood that mostly concealed Arturo Leonine's face. Leonine opened his mouth, his wand arm outstretched.

"_Expelliarmus_!" shouted Harry Potter.

The wand clattered to the cobbles, and Leonine's marble green eyes darted to it. When Harry and Ron glanced in astonishment at Draco, Leonine dove to snatch it up and then Apparated in an instant.

"What the Hell—?"

There was that synchronized thing again. Draco tried to sigh, and a little bit of blood bubbled out of his mouth. They really needed to get their brains surgically disconnected. Little fancy work with the scalpel would solve this problem lickety-split.

Draco nodded to himself. Then he lay down on the cold cobblestones and passed out.

* * *

_Author's Note: MWAhahahaha!_

_Sorry. I couldn't resist an evil laugh after that cliffhanger. I mean, really. But all is not lost, because I'll be updating on Wednesdays as well from now on._


	15. Just a Cookie

_Author's Note: I wanna' rock and roll all ni-i-ight, and party every day…_

_Some food for thought: maybe if it makes you go "wtf?!!", that's because I _want_ it to make you go "wtf?!!". Then again, maybe it's because I F-ed up. On second thought, it's probably the latter._

_Um, oops, Ron's kind of an asshole in this chapter. Didn't mean for that to happen. I really like him, I swear. Most of the time. Some of the time. Occasionally._

* * *

Chapter Fifteen

Just a Cookie

Hermione was sitting on the couch on top of Draco's bedding, reading the paper. There was a worrying story about a pregnant woman who had been found dead. The baby had died with her, and she hadn't yet been identified.

Glumly Hermione folded the newspaper and pushed it across the table. She felt horrible about herself, and she felt horrible for feeling horrible about herself, because there were much worse things happening in the world. She was twenty bloody years old. Why did she feel like she had already failed? She'd done a lot in two decades.

And at the same time… Hermione sighed. She hated her job, lived in a four-room apartment in a hellhole tenement building, and had never been laid. Whatever she told herself, however many times she repeated that twenty was still good and young and only a year away from being a teenager, the things that people said—her mother, and Lychorida Bolton, and even the dreaded Hesperides—took root and grew rapidly in the fragile soil of her insecure heart.

Furious tears sparked in her eyes. She needed a scapegoat—she needed someone to blame. Acknowledging her own failure would have hurt too much to bear. This was all _Ron's_ fault—

There was a banging knock on the door and then, like a demon conjured by the thought, Ron's voice shouted at her.

"_Hermione_!"

Her fists clenched the sheets in both hands.

"I don't want to talk to you!" she shouted back.

Harry's voice sounded next. "_Hermione, please_!"

"I don't want to talk to you, either! In fact, I never want to talk to you again! In fact, I hope you fall off a cliff and _die_! In fact, I'd rather it be even more painful than _that_! In fact, I'd like it to involve a bit of lava and a _meat_ cleaver!"

It was Ron again. "Hermione, it's Draco!"

She froze. Then she scrambled heedlessly over the coffee table and yanked open the door.

Harry had Draco's shoulders, and Ron had his legs. Between the two of them, they heaved him onto the couch, where he continued to bleed forlornly. His face was whiter than the sheets his fluids were staining.

"What did you _do_?" Hermione gasped.

"We didn't do _anything_!" Harry protested, holding his hands up to signal peace.

"Yeah, except save his bloody ass," Ron muttered.

"Pun _not_ appreciated, Ronald Weasley," Hermione snapped. "This is_ my_ house—"

Ron snorted. "Some 'house.'"

Hermione heard her voice rise both in pitch and in volume. "—and I can throw you out of it faster than—"

"A speeding bullet," Draco said.

Hermione stared at him. His eyes were open, though only just, and he was watching the exchange with a very, very thin, very, very wan smile.

"Can I get you something?" she asked urgently.

"New skin," he declared. "Mine's all torn up. Don't want it anymore. It'll be like in _Jeepers Creepers_—"

"I'll go soak some towels," Hermione told Harry and—the other one. She went to dig for some under the sink in the kitchen.

"Did you do her yet?" the _other one_ asked eagerly as soon as she'd stepped out of the room.

"…Pardon?" Draco responded weakly.

"Did you _do_ her. I could never talk her into it, though it might have saved us—"

"_Ron_," Harry interrupted.

"Well, doesn't matter anyway, since we gave up and everything." He sighed—happily. "But it's better now. Better this way."

Hemione wrung the life out of the particular specimen of towel unfortunate enough to be in her hands. She wasn't going to think about it. She wasn't going to think about him and his beautiful girlfriend—fiancée—_wife_—and how bloody happy they bloody well were. Oh, no; she wasn't going to think about that. She wasn't going to think about how he had won because she had lost him. She wasn't going to think about the glinting gold ring that she _hadn't_ seen on a finger that had used to twirl itself in her hair when he was feeling flirtatious. She wasn't going to think about any of it at all, because as much as Draco was, as much as she knew Draco could be, she still had her own set of battle wounds, and they were far from scarring over.

"So did you?" the _other one_ inquired again, excitedly.

"For the love of _Christ_, Ron!" Harry interjected.

"Who's Christ, and why do you love him so much?"

"Never _mind_! Just—Hermione's our _friend_, not some racy TV show you catch up on when you get a chance and gossip about—"

"She can also quite clearly hear you from the kitchen," Draco said mildly. "And to answer your question, Mister Weasley, I am a gentleman, ergo the only thing I do around here is the dishes."

"I don't trust him with the laundry," Hermione added stiffly, doing her damnedest to try to make light of it all.

Draco smiled weakly at her and then closed his eyes. "As well you shouldn't."

Pushing her way shamelessly in between her _ex_-friends (and making sure that Ron got a taste of her elbow), Hermione started mopping blood off of Draco's skin. Once she'd soaked up the worst of it, it became clear that its source was a single long, smooth, deep gash on the left side of Draco's chest.

"_Sectumsempra_ again," Draco murmured.

"'Again'?" Harry and Ron repeated in perfect unison.

Inexplicably, Draco gave a choking laugh that quickly became a wet cough. He had shielded his mouth with his fist, and he drew it away bloody.

"Oh, shit," Hermione whimpered.

There was dead silence for a moment as everyone stared at her.

"I mean, 'darn,'" she amended feebly.

"Well, that was a monumental first," Draco remarked dryly. "I'm going to sleep now." And he closed his eyes again.

"No, you're not," Hermione told him. "You're going to the emergency room, where you're going to get stitches."

Draco sighed—a sigh that succumbed to the same horrible, bloody cough as the laugh before it. "_Women_," he said.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sparky failed miserably to understand the subtle concept of Draco's infirmity. He seemed to understand only that, because Draco was spending the vast majority of Sunday stretched out on the couch, his favorite perch on Draco's chest was very available. Ergo _he_ spent the vast majority of Sunday leaping up onto it.

Consequently, Hermione spent the majority of Sunday grabbing him around the middle, disentangling his single set of claws from the gauze on Draco's chest, and relocating him to the floor.

"_Sparky_," she sighed when she found him curled up on top of Draco for the umpteenth time.

"He can't help it," Draco remarked. "We're soul-mates, after all."

"I think he's also part dog," Hermione noted, looking at Sparky's fluffy gray face. "He's giving me puppy eyes."

"If I give you puppy eyes, too," Draco offered with a grin, "will you bring me a cookie?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "We have cookies?"

Draco grinned more facetiously yet, a sure sign that his strength was slowly coming back. "Did you pay any attention to what you were putting in that shopping cart, love?"

Hermione knew that it was a term of endearment. She knew it was a pet name, and one that Draco had employed before. She knew that he threw them out with abandon. But she couldn't keep a little smile off of her lips. "Not in the slightest," she admitted. "I figured you'd take care of me."

Draco's grin widened. "I'm very flattered." Then he put on a mournful face and stuck out his lower lip imploringly. "I'm also very hungry."

"Then you shouldn't be eating cookies," Hermione sniffed.

"What?" Draco's eyes were wide and horrified. "_No cookies_?"

"What, you want to be diabetic by twenty-five?" she asked him.

Draco pressed his hands over his eyes. "I just want a _cookie_, woman!"

"Not when you're on your deathbed, you don't!" she fired back.

"You mean my death-_couch_," Draco corrected.

Firmly Hermione folded her arms across her chest. "I'm willing to bring you something healthy, but if you want a cookie, you're going to have to get up and get it yourself."

After about five minutes of highly impressive moaning, keening, and whining, Draco plucked the cat off of his chest, got up, and went to go delve his head into the fridge.

Evidently, he was cured.

By that evening, he was dancing around as he did the vacuuming.

"_Don't you forget about me_," he was crooning to Sparky as the cat darted away from the roaring vacuum. "_I'll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby/Going to take you apart/I'll put us back together at heart, baby_—" He swung his hips back and forth a few times and tried to maneuver the vacuum into a spin, to little success. Sparky retreated to the couch, and Draco crouched down to sing to him at his level. "_Don't you forget about me/Don't, don't, don't, don't/Don't you forget about me_…"

Hermione didn't think that such a thing would be possible.


	16. Fantabulousirrific

_Author's Note: Four more chapters, ladies and gents._

_Who am I kidding. You're all ladies, aren't you? And you're all here for Draco, aren't you? AREN'T YOU??_

_(Except for navybluedragon, whose profile states that he is, in fact, a he. Rara avis. More power to you, man.)_

_Wow, this chapter kind of embarrasses me. I don't know where I got the guts to write it. Right about now, I am hiding under my desk with my arms wrapped around my knees, rocking back and forth and whimpering as I try to find my happy place._

_Sketch._

* * *

Chapter Sixteen

Fantabulousiriffic

Draco was pleased to discover that he felt just about fine on Monday morning. There was, of course, the unfortunate fact that he had gone and gotten one of his shirts shredded, which was a problem given that he didn't have too many shirts to spare at the moment. He couldn't wait to get his first mediocre paycheck and go _buy_ something. Going out and _buying_ things felt amazing.

Plus he could be a real man and take Hermione out to dinner.

He hummed to himself a little as he attempted to negotiate with his hair in the bathroom. His hair tended to hold grudges and kill its hostages.

"Hermy, dear," he called, per tradition.

"Because I didn't see this coming from a hundred miles away, I will ask—What is it?"

"Can I borrow your perfume?"

"Yes."

"Not even a—wait, _what_?"

Hermione laughed merrily.

Draco grinned.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Draco chewed on the end of his quill a little. It was eight o'clock, and he was already bored.

They toiled for ridiculously long hours, these Ministry goons did. Fools, all; him included. Him most of all. He could have lived off of Hermione's charity for the rest of his worthless life, but then his bloody _conscience_ had gotten in the way.

Draco was pretty sure that man's conscience was proof against evolution.

Helicane strolled in about twenty minutes later and paused by Draco's desk.

"Get you some coffee, Ardoc, m'boy?" he asked cheerfully.

"No, thank you," Draco said. "Big breakfast."

Helicane paused and scratched one or another of his chins. "Housing is a bloody nightmare around here," he remarked. "Where are you staying, out of curiosity?"

"With Hermione," Draco answered blithely, feeling himself smile as he said her name.

Eyebrows rising, Helicane grinned. "Oh?" He chuckled throatily. "Is she like a Vossel?"

Draco knew nothing of vacuum cleaner brands, and it must have shown on his face.

Helicane grinned wider, waved a finger in the air, and quoted a vaguely familiar slogan. "'Plain exterior,'" he declared, "'superior performance.'"

Before Draco could either (a) laugh incredulously; (b) gag disgustedly; (c) stare in horror; or (d) throw Hermione on the floor, ravish her, and find out for certain, the trio of girls that Hermione hated sidled up to his desk.

Helicane looked them over appreciatively, winked broadly at Draco, and slipped tactfully back into his office.

"Sorry," the brunette told him breathily, "but we're _desperate_ to know your name."

Draco stood and put his hand out, arranging a cordial smile on his face. "Ardoc Olyfam," he announced. "Pleasure to meet you."

The three of them tittered approvingly at the statement and hopped forward to move his hand weakly and daintily up and down a few times, not a firm handshake in the lot of them. Draco smiled, realizing that he was looking for a very Hermione-ish sort of thing among girls like these.

"Do you have a brother?" the blonde one gasped out, looking at him through her heavily-made-up eyelashes.

"Do you have _three_ brothers?" the redhead pressed eagerly, tugging on a ringlet.

"I'm an only child," Draco informed them.

Faces fell.

"Do you have three _cousins_?" the blonde one hazarded. The brunette gave her a look.

"Much as I _hate_ to interrupt this _highly _worthwhile conversation," he said, attempting towards contrite, "I _do_ have a few things to attend to."

Faces fell further. Then their owners shuffled off to get back to their jobs. Or, more likely, to seek out a new victim.

Draco chewed on the end of his quill a little more until the barbs of the feather started coming out in his mouth. He was about to get out his deck of cards and start up a rousing game of Solitaire when Helicane reemerged from his office.

"Promised you a spot of coffee, didn't I?" he inquired.

Draco smiled. "I'm fine, but thank you."

"Right, right. Well, I'm dying without, so I'll be back in just a few minutes…" Off he went, like a blimp drifting across the horizon.

Draco got up and went to go see what Hermione was doing.

He tiptoed right up behind her to whisper in her ear.

"Hello, darling," he said. He then proceeded to duck out of the way.

His caution was rewarded by the fact that, once again, Hermione jumped in surprise, her shoulder moving directly into the place where Draco's face had been moments before.

"For the love of _God_, Draco!" she squeaked.

He stood and grinned. "No," he corrected, "for the love of _you_." He leaned down, kissed her forehead, and skipped away. People gave him funny looks, but he didn't give half a damn. He didn't give a quarter of a damn. He didn't even give an _eighth _of a damn.

And that was about as far as his math skills went.

Draco sat down at his desk and spun around on his rolling chair a bit. When he started to get dizzy, he reluctantly stopped, which turned out to be another godsend given that Helicane returned just seconds later.

"Working hard, Ardoc?" he inquired cheerfully, offering a wink.

Due to the recent bout of whirling around in his chair, Draco was somewhat disoriented and more than a little nauseous, but he smiled back. "Oh, yes," he lied. "Toiling away."

Helicane's credulity was a thing to behold—and a thing to lean on frequently. "Glad to hear it," he announced. He clapped his hand down on Draco's desk once and then waltzed off into his office once again.

As soon as he'd left, Draco started drawing some more stick figures. He didn't know why Hermione hated work so much.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

After a day of pretending to be very busy when Helicane was out of his office and doodling on Ministry stationery when he was safely in it, Draco went and got Hermione, and they went back to good old Number 78. Tonight was the long-awaited taco night, and Draco tucked in heartily. Hermione, he noticed, was not following suit.

A single, offhanded glance revealed that she looked very, very tightly-wound. Tighter than usual, even, which was a considerable feat. Usually she was secure-shoelaces tight or trying-to-get-a-ball-of-yarn-down-to-size tight. Today she was trying-to-break-a-rubber-band tight.

Draco was concerned that that rubber band was going to snap back into one or both of their faces.

"What is it?" he asked slowly.

"Nothing."

"Hardly," he noted dryly.

"Right, hardly anything." Stubborn, seething, and tight as an extended bungee cord. That was where she stood.

"Hermione," he said.

She looked at him, and her eyes were glossy with unshed tears. It scared the Hell out of him.

"I just had a bad day, all right?" She sounded like she was trying to be venomous, but the ring of it was merely defeated. "I had a bunch of idiot coworkers harassing me, and there was more to do than ever, and then at the very end—" She mustered up a bit of spitting anger for this part. "—_Giles Helicane_ came and read me the riot act, saying that—" She hesitated and then plunged on. "—saying that _you_ had found some problem with something I'd done, and that if I didn't up the caliber of my work by a good percentage by next week, he'd see to it that I was out of a job."

Draco stared. He couldn't remember saying any such thing. Had he? Or had he just been insufferably stupid enough to agree to another of Helicane's proposals without even listening to it?

Draco took the dishes and stowed them all neatly in the dishwasher. He turned to Hermione and put his hands in his pockets. "Do you trust me to try to help?" he inquired. _Rather than to, you know, throw you on the floor and ravish you, then take all your cash and valuables and go racing out the door, I mean,_ his brain added helpfully.

Draco ignored it. Hermione was looking at him, and she could see on his face that he was serious, whether or not his brain was feeling particularly solemn.

"Yes," she said, and Draco had never heard a more beautiful word.

Except maybe "fantabulousiriffic." That one was pretty beautiful.

Quite compliantly, she followed his instructions to the letter, and soon she sat on the edge of her double bed in her pajama pants and a navy blue tank top with spaghetti straps. (Draco was reminded of the spaghetti she'd made him the first night and pushed the thought from his meandering mind before it could list the reasons why pasketti, not ambrosia, was truly the food of the gods.) A halter top might have been marginally better, but the very question of whether she owned one had sent a blush shooting up to claim the better portion of Hermione's face, so he let it rest.

He set her down on her front on the bed, had her clasp her hands above her head, slid the straps of her shirt a bit off her shoulders, knelt over her for leverage, and then proceeded to give her the massage of her life.

As he had guessed, predicted, and, quite frankly, known beyond a shadow of a doubt, she was extraordinarily tense. He put his whole weight into his hands.

"Ow," Hermione said. "Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow."

_Fives "ow"s,_ Draco thought. _That's about as good as five stars, in this business._

"Does it hurt too much?" he asked. If it was starting to seem life-threatening, he would, he knew, have to stop.

"It hurts—ow. But—ow—in a really kind of good wa—_ooh_."

Draco grinned.

It was glorious. Hermione released a series of little moans and gasps and whimpers; she clenched both fists in the pillow; she writhed under his hands. The more of her supple, beautifully blemished skin he saw, the more it compelled him. It was warm , it was close, and it was delectable. He pulled out every stop he could think of and a few more that his pistoning body thought of for him.

It was like sex, only without the sex part. Which did not make it nothing, and rather made it amazing. Even… fantabulousiriffic.

When Draco's arms were so sore as to be almost immobile, he collapsed onto the bed next to her and panted awhile. "Can I sleep here?" he asked. He didn't have the strength to move. He didn't even have the strength to fetch some mango-banana-papaya juice to quench his thirst, and _that_ was really saying something. He could have crossed a desert and still been up for some M.B.P.

From beneath half-fallen lids, Hermione looked at him, and sleepily and utterly contentedly, she smiled. "Please do," she said.

Draco was happy to oblige.


	17. Fearless

_Author's Note: Je n'ai rien à dire._

_Sauf que j'aime beaucoup les blagues qui s'agissent de "Yer Mom."_

_And sorry about the delay; I got very lost trying to take a bus, wandered around awhile until I got desperate enough to call Eltea and have her Google Map me back to safety, and then had to start reading _King Lear_. In the midst of all this insanity, I forgot it was HaM Day. Blasphemy, I know._

_And excessive apologies to bluenavydragon, whose name I managed to screw up recently by some feat of pure idiocy._

* * *

Chapter Seventeen

Fearless

When the alarm clock howled the next morning, Hermione cracked an eye open. She looked at the dark red letters for a moment, and then she opened the other eye. She blinked them both. There was something very strange going on. She felt… awake. Rested. Almost pleasant.

This wasn't a normal feeling for 6:45 in the morning. This wasn't a normal feeling for any time of the day. This wasn't a normal feeling for this _planet_.

Then she reached out to turn off her alarm and discovered why she felt this way. It was because Draco Malfoy's arms were around her, and she'd been nestled comfortably into the curve of his body. As she moved, he mumbled something, and Sparky, who was curled up next to _her_, opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Mrow," he announced.

"You, too," she told him. Then she slammed her hand down on the alarm, maneuvered around her favorite feline and her favorite human, and climbed out of bed to go take a shower.

She paused to look in the mirror in the bathroom. She still looked twelve, but she certainly didn't look dead. She looked… happy. "Happy" was a _marked_ improvement over "dead." That much, at least, was unequivocal.

When she reemerged from the shower and peeked into the bedroom, Draco was still lying there, now clutching Sparky to his chest like a teddy bear. The cat didn't seem to have any objections.

That was when she should have known Draco was the right one—when she had seen that the cat liked him. Weren't there books full of magical tripe about how cats understood things that people didn't?

Well, she supposed she shouldn't give Sparky _too_ much credit until he started writing out calculus formulas, but it was looking like he'd been right on the money this time. Though you had to view any consultant who licked himself with a degree of doubt.

Her hair dripping down the back of her neck, Hermione went into her kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Every time she saw that it full of food, it surprised her—but it was a pleasant surprise. Having food was not a bad thing. In fact, it was rather nice.

Everything was nice with Draco around. Hermione was beginning to worry that she would overdose on _nice_. Could you overdose on _nice_? Was there such a thing as being too happy? Would you lose sight of what happiness actually was if you were faced with too much of it?

Oh, who cared? She had slept through the night without waking up once, without lying in bed for hours with her mind racing from one red flag to another, without a moment of worry or panic, and she had done it in the arms of a very courageous, very kind, very hot man by the name of Draco Malfoy. That was plenty.

The elation made her feel brave. She plucked the mango-banana-papaya juice right out of the fridge, poured herself a tall glass, and drank it fearlessly.

Well, mostly fearlessly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"How's _Ardoc_?" the brunette asked smugly as she and her cronies arrived. It was ten o'clock sharp. These girls didn't waste time.

"He's doing _vigorously_," Hermione answered brightly.

"'Vigorously'?" the trio repeated together. They exchanged looks.

"What do you mean, 'vigorously'?" the brunette inquired cautiously.

"You mean, like, healthy," the blonde put forth tentatively and hopefully, "but not in a wanting-to-sleep-with-you kind of way—right?"

The brunette whacked her on the arm. "You're not supposed to out and _say_ it!"

"_Ow_!" the blonde cried, rubbing at the afflicted area. "You _hit_ me!"

"Well, _duh_," the redhead muttered, rolling her eyes. She tossed her head, likely hoping to look proud and aloof, and succeeded only in resembling a shampoo commercial. "Otherwise it wouldn't _hurt_."

"You deserved it," the brunette snapped, "asking a question like that. _Really_. You're like a rock, but dumber, and with hair."

"I am _not_!" the blonde protested. "Does a rock have skin like this? _Does it_? Feel this skin and tell me it feels like a rock." She grabbed the nearest available fingers—which happened to belong to the redhead—and pressed them to her cheek.

"Leggo!" her victim interjected, trying to pull away.

"Feel that?" the blonde prompted. "That's what it feels like when you moisturize twice a day and revitalize twice a week. Rocks don't moisturize _at all_."

Clearly, this girl was quite the geologist.

"Well, maybe you should revitalize your _brain_," the brunette sniffed. "I think it's _dead_."

"_You're_ dead!"

"Your _mother_ is dead!"

"She is not; she lives down the street!"

Hermione got up, took the latest letter summaries from her desk, and went to deliver them to the appropriate departments, smiling to herself.

Dynesy Cranot was slim and just a bit too tall, to the point that he seemed a little awkward. He had short, graying brown hair and pale brown eyes that clung respectfully to you while you were speaking and wandered wildly as he responded. He was like the uncle that you only saw once a year but really liked anyway, or the guy who sat at an outside table at the coffee shop on the corner of your street and always said hello to you when you walked by. He was also the head of the Department of Magical Catastrophes.

He accepted the slip of paper from her and smiled that light, distracted smile that he had. Nobody was really sure whether Dynesy Cranot was all there, eighty percent there, or not really there at all, and as long as he got his work done on time, nobody seemed inclined to press the issue.

"The last one was very humorous," he remarked, his gaze meandering over the wall behind her. "We enjoyed it."

Hermione blushed. She'd been ready to strangle the author of the most recent letter directed at this department, and the summary of that letter had, consequently, come in somewhere between absurdly sardonic and outright scathing. "I was getting a little impatient," she mumbled.

Dynesy glanced at her, and his bemused smile flickered wider. "Your impatience is endearing," he remarked. "Feel free to let it into the things that come here. We won't tell."

Slowly, Hermione grinned back. Then she returned to her desk, sat down contentedly, and went to work on another extremely impatient summary.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When she went to collect Draco at five, he wasn't as his desk, but there was a lot of laughter emanating from Helicane's office.

"You're making that up," she heard Draco say. He laughed again, a sound like balm on a wound, like aloe vera on a sunburn, like—

Hermione needed to stop doing that in her head. It was weird. And kind of creepy.

"Don't look at me like that!" Draco was continuing. "You've got to be making that up. _Skydiving_, sir?"

Hesitantly, Hermione knocked.

"Come in," Helicane called offhandedly. "And what, Ardoc, did I tell you about that 'sir' business?"

When she opened the door, Hermione found Helicane seated behind his desk with Draco opposite him. They were drinking champagne out of beautiful crystal wineglasses, and Draco's beautiful crystal wineglass was half empty.

"Is it so terrible to venerate one's superiors, _sir_?" Draco replied, grinning.

"I'll drink to that," Helicane declared cheerfully. He and Draco knocked their glasses together and drank deeply. Only then did Helicane look up at his visitor. The mirth fell from his face like a loosely-secured mask. "Granger," he greeted her frostily.

As always, she did her best to be polite, even when she wanted nothing more than to slap the thinly-veiled distaste right off his fat face.

"I was looking for Draco," she explained.

Helicane raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What's the rush?"

"We have reservations at Tarsus," Hermione invented. Tarsus was some swanky restaurant that had just opened on the boulevard. The truth was, she really just wanted Draco away from Helicane and his bloody champagne. There was something not-quite-right about the whole thing, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.

"What's the occasion?" Helicane wanted to know.

"Well, new job," she improvised, motioning to Draco.

"New life," Draco added.

"New outlook," Hermione added nervously, watching Helicane's stony face.

"New cat," Draco concluded.

The stone melted into an indulgent smile as Helicane looked at Draco. "Reason enough, I suppose," he noted. "Go on, then, m'boy. Go have your nice dinner."

Draco set his wineglass down and stood, smiling blithely. "All right," he conceded. "I will. Thank you very much, sir. This was most lovely. _Most_ lovely."

_More like "Most deeply and entirely disturbing,"_ Hermione thought.

As they left, she did her very best not to run out of the Ministry screaming and waving both arms in the air. She would very much have liked to. Giles Helicane had that effect on her.

"Do you ever actually do any work?" she asked Draco wryly.

"All the time," he replied pleasantly. "I'm either working like a dog setting up appointments and so forth, or I'm working like a dog trying to make it look like I'm working like a dog."

"I see," Hermione remarked.

"Do you see?" Draco inquired. "Or do you _perceive_?"

She turned to raise an eyebrow at him and discovered that he looked a little pale. "Are you all right?" she asked slowly.

Thinly Draco smiled. "Yeah, fine," he assured her airily. "Just a little piqued. Probably the wine. We're not _actually_ going to Tarsus, are we?"

They were in the lobby of the apartment building, and Hermione guided Draco straight to the rickety elevator. She didn't even want to _try_ the stairs. Then she had a better idea, looked both ways, took Draco's arm, and Apparated up to the hallway right in front of Number 78.

"Oh, my Heavens!" Lychorida Bolton shrieked. "You—you appeared from nowhere! You _and_ your fiancé!"

_Gulp,_ Hermione thought.

"No, no!" she insisted. "We… were just… being very quiet, because he has a headache." She patted Draco's arm and wished he didn't look like he _was_ in a lot of pain. "Trick of the light, I'm sure."

Lychorida Bolton did not look convinced. Hermione jammed her keys in the door, opened it, pushed Draco inside gently, and ducked in after him. "Have a nice evening!" she called, after which she slammed the door shut and leaned on it, ready to wipe her brow melodramatically.

Only Draco wasn't there to see it. She paused, and in the lull, she heard some very forlorn vomiting noises coming from the bathroom.

"Oh, Christ," she said.

"His would be holy," Draco panted.

"Oh, _Christ_," she repeated.


	18. Death of a Bookshelf

_Author's Note: Sorry it's a bit… short. My climaxes always go wrong somehow. Gahh and other incoherent interjections of frustration._

_Incidentally, HOLY BEJESUS, 200 REVIEWS. A round of hugs on me, bartender._

* * *

Chapter Eighteen

Death of a Bookshelf

Draco felt like shit.

Well, he wasn't really sure what shit felt like. He didn't have any personal experience. And he wasn't quite sure that shit felt anything at all, given that it wasn't exactly alive.

Maybe he should amend that statement. He felt really, really terrible.

He had upchucked just about everything there was to upchuck, and there was a sharp, insistent ache in his chest as a result. It was like being stabbed. Repeatedly. With a rusty knife.

In other words, _lame_.

Draco would have heaved a deep and heartfelt sigh, but that would have hurt like Hell on fire with brimstone.

Hermione brought him some water, and he drank cautiously, trying to quiet the demands of his empty stomach with his wary logic, which knew full well that he was simply giving himself something else to expel if he wasn't careful.

Just the thought made his stomach twist, and he choked and sprayed water everywhere.

"Ow," he said.

"Eew," Hermione said. He'd just spat water all over her.

"Sorry," he managed.

"You're morbidly ill," she sighed. "All is forgiven." She smiled down at him, somewhat sadly. "I guess it wouldn't be very wise of us to share the bed, would it?"

_When have I ever done what is wise?_ part of Draco inquired pointedly.

_You're damn well going to now,_ another part growled.

The inquiring part covered its head and crept away, and the growling part folded its arms firmly and nodded its approval. _That's right, bitch,_ it remarked.

"I would rather die than contaminate you," he announced to Hermione. Perhaps not strictly true, but it sure sounded exciting.

A bit of a tingle went through Draco's body at the very thought that there _were_, in fact, things that he would rather die than do to Hermione Granger, whether or not contaminating her was one of them.

Unnecessarily, Hermione tucked the blanket in around him a little. "If there's anything else you need," she told him, "just yell for me. I'd better go to bed if I want to last through the day tomorrow." She bent down, eyes closed, lips pursed.

"Wait!" he cried.

She opened her eyes and drew back, looking… hurt.

The pain that jolted through him then was worse than any prompted by upchucking. He could have upchucked for a thousand years without so much as a potty break and felt less miserable than he did looking at that hurt in Hermione's eyes.

"It'll taste like puke," he explained weakly.

Hermione smiled, and Draco was free again—free to feel the more mundane kind of aching in his chest. Hermione, for her part, settled with kissing him on the forehead, a safe distance from his germy breath.

"Goodnight," she whispered.

"'Night," he replied.

She smiled at him one last time from the doorway before she flicked off the lights.

So if you didn't count the utter and undeniable lameness of the profuse upchucking, everything was just about all right.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As the night began, the dreams were feverish, weird and wild and deeply wrong, full to bursting of things that didn't exist, couldn't exist, and shouldn't for the sake of the collective sanity of mankind—creatures and demons and a thousand kinds of madness crammed much too tightly into his reeling mind. Draco twisted and kicked, but if they didn't dart out of the way like shadows, they were as intangible as wraiths; his fists and his feet slipped right through them, and the creatures didn't pause. There was a searing pain as a black mark burned into existence on his left forearm, flaring red, scorching his fragile skin. The snake coiled within it writhed and rose, tearing free of its two-dimensional bonds on his arm and lifting a swaying head level with his. Green eyes set deep in its triangular head burned brightly, lit from within with an unrelenting, unnatural fire, gouging their way down into Draco's very soul. He couldn't escape, couldn't run, couldn't move, couldn't scream—

And then something changed. Draco didn't know whether it was a real or a dream; he couldn't distinguish between them anymore; was there really any difference? But something changed, then, and he saw the woman with the thick brown hair and the deep, dark eyes—eyes that sparked like stone against steel when she was angry but could be softer than dove's down. They were soft now. She bent over him, and she kissed the mark away.

And the nightmares ceased, and all was well.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The sound of the door being forced open shook Draco from a new dream, a wonderful and extremely detailed one about—well, best not to go there. Groggily he sat partway up, and it was then that he saw Giles Helicane standing just inside the room, panting but triumphant.

"Wh—" Draco began.

Helicane smiled nastily. "Time," he said, "for your little 'London Suburbs Murderer' to strike again." He raised his wand and, with a confidence born of certainty, angled it directly at Draco. "_Avada_—"

Draco would have said his prayers. If he had had any. If he had even really been awake.

"_Ked—_AUGH!"

Sparky had sat back on his haunches and, with his one good forepaw, scratched right through Giles Helicane's slacks to make some sizeable gashes in the man's pale, fatty leg.

Arturo Leonine burst through the battered door and glared around with forest green eyes harder and colder than granite. Untamed golden-brown hair shot with gray brushed his shoulders as he turned his head angrily, seeking his quarry.

But Draco had already nipped up his wand and dived behind the couch. He poked his head up and aimed his wand at Helicane. "_Rictusempra_!" he managed to yelp out around the fear closing his throat, squeezing his heart, suffocating him—this was _it_, this was the _end_, he was trapped like a fly in a jar, like a rabbit in its den, like a wizard in an apartment, and they _had_ him at _last_—

"_Protego_," Helicane said calmly, and Draco's pathetic charm was quite summarily absorbed into a crackling blue shield.

Even as Draco's brain whirred, trying to come up with a way to react, Leonine moved, and Draco turned to see him mere steps away.

Leonine's arm rose. "_Avada_," he said quietly, "_kedavra_."

Draco watched in mute horror as at the tip of Leonine's wand there gathered a glowing orb of an eerie green. He was going to die. He was going to die, and he'd never even been thrown on the floor and ravished. How could life _be_ so unfair?

Then Hermione barreled into Leonine's shoulder.

A jet of vibrant green shot through the room like emerald lightning and slammed into the bookshelf at the back left corner. Like horrendous decay in fast-motion, the wood withered and blackened until it looked like the wasted remains of a charred corpse, balanced precariously in place. The grotesquerie held for a moment, and then the tortured wood crumbled to ash. Unsuspended books tumbled from the air and landed wedged in the pile of dust that had once been sturdy shelving.

Draco's mouth, he discovered, was very, very dry.

He tore his eyes from the results of his quick dance with death and looked to the other occupants of the room.

Helicane was staring at the remains of the bookshelf. His rounded jaw had dropped.

Draco said, "_Petrificus totalus_," and the rounded rest of Helicane also dropped—to the floor.

An infuriated grunt brought his attention to Leonine. Hermione had thrown both arms around his neck from behind and looked to be in the process of attempting to strangle him. Uttering a growl that started low in his chest, Leonine thrashed and kicked and clawed at her with both hands, but even when his nails drew blood, Hermione held on.

He had to slam his heel down on her foot before she cried out and yielded her grip.

In the work of an instant, Leonine shoved his way free of her and Apparated. With an ear-splitting _crack_, he winked out of sight, as if he'd never been.

Draco moved immediately to Hermione, raising his hands to touch the bloody scratches on her cheeks as gently as he could possibly manage.

"You were _amazing_," he told her, unable to keep a smile of pure relief off of his face. He drew his fingertips away wet. "Though we should disinfect those. We probably don't want to know where Leonine's fingernails have been." He paused and looked at her. "Where's your wand?" he asked.

Hermione blushed. "Nightstand," she mumbled. Draco laughed and leaned forward to kiss her, his angel, his savior, his fondest dream incarnate—

There was a sudden pressure against his shin, and he froze. Terror mounting in his chest, he looked down.

Sparky rubbed his head harder against Draco's ankle and purred.

Grinning, Draco leaned down and picked him up. "Can I marry your cat?" he asked Hermione.

She grinned right back. "I don't think that's legal."

* * *

_A/N: Some of you, as became clear in the reviews, were far too intelligent for this fic. Sigh. I did my best. Hopefully the (shall we say) plot twist was enjoyable, even if it wasn't quite as subtle as I seemed to think… Did I drop too many hints, or was it just transparent from the start?_


	19. Curiouser and Curiouser

_Author's Note: Oh, no, falling action!_

_Heh, I'll have to be more careful dropping hints next time I try to have a plot. Plot is my nemesis. (That and math. I am utterly hopeless at math.) There's a delicate balance between being unfairly confusing and making people go "OH!!", and I seem to have fallen slightly short. Well, hey. Learning experience and so forth. I'll see if I can't do better next time._

_Oh, and bluenavydragon, I definitely read your review wrong, and… yeah. Please ignore my utter idiocy. First your name; now this—when will it END? In the meantime, you have my express permission to beat me with a stick. One with rusty nails stuck in it. _

_After this chapter, if there's anything that isn't explained (and isn't attributable to my general stupidity), let me know, and I'll try to clarify for next time._

_Fic plus reviews equals love. And that, my friends, is the extent of my mathematical capabilities._

* * *

Chapter Nineteen

Curiouser and Curiouser

Andray Rachels was a proponent of the widespread use of Veritaserum, and Hermione knew it. That was why she went straight to him with Giles Helicane.

Helicane, for all his potent Death Glares in Draco and Hermione's direction, started singing like a rather large, discolored, tone-deaf canary as soon as the potion made its merry way through his system.

"Oh, it was all exceedingly simple," he declared calmly. "Kill the stupid kid. That was all we ever really wanted. And _damn_, if we didn't get close a few times."

Andray Rachels raised a thin, jet-black eyebrow. He was always extraordinarily well-groomed, and today was no exception; not a strand of midnight hair was out of order. There wasn't a wrinkle in his suit or a whisker on his pointed chin. This, as far as Hermione was concerned, was the kind of man you wanted running your country: cold, clean, and ruthless.

"You tried to kill him," Andray summarized flatly.

"Countless times," Helicane confirmed sadly. "Countless times, and each time, we failed. Arturo really is an idiot, you know. When you're beating the living daylights out of someone, you don't just _leave_ the guy there when you're done. Unless you've checked his pulse yourself—I mean, if he'd just used a spell in the first place—_imbecile_, I tell you." Helicane sighed and rubbed his eyes. "First thing I learned getting rid of all those fools who stood in my way—use a spell, and get it done. Simplicity is perfection."

"So if you wanted to kill Draco," Hermione said slowly, "why did you hire him as your secretary?"

Helicane smiled thinly at her. "Oh, stupid, stupid girl," he replied softly. "All the brains in the world, and not a shred of creativity." His smile disappeared as if a curtain had been dropped over it—a curtain of pure malice. (Hermione, for her part, would have preferred the gilt-edged crimson kind they had at nice theaters.) "If he was my _secretary_," Helicane went on, rolling his eyes, "I had my eye on him all the time. I could offer him tea, offer him coffee, offer him God knows what else, and put whatever I wanted in it."

"The champagne," Draco muttered, tapping his fingers on his chin.

"Of _course_ the champagne, you bloody idiot," Helicane snapped. "And if you'd drunk the whole glass, like you were _supposed_ to, you'd be _dead_ right now instead of sitting there with that stupid look on your face, y'bloody _monkey_."

"Ouch," Draco said, somewhat distantly. "'Monkey'? Did I really deserve that?"

Andray Rachels took some detailed notes on his yellow legal notepad. They probably did not involve Helicane's apparently limited repertoire of insults.

"And all the tripe you gave me about my shoddy work and everything," Hermione said, realizing it aloud. "That was all to split us up, wasn't it?"

Sneering, Helicane looked to Andray. "Did I hire her? _Did_ I? Because if I did, I take it back."

"That's not why you're here, Giles," Andray responded equably. "Just answer the question."

Helicane turned his sharp, accusatory eyes on Hermione again. "Picture it," he told her. "Picture pining uselessly for your revenge after all you ever wanted has fallen to pieces at the hands of a bunch of upstarts led by that bastard Harry Potter."

"He's a good sort," Draco said.

Hermione stared at him disbelievingly, and he shrugged.

"That _bastard_ Harry Potter," Helicane repeated, louder. "And all because the Malfoys decided to cop out right when we needed them. Their son disappears, the little prick—"

"_Big_ prick, thanks," Draco cut in.

"—and then _they're_ gone. What's a man to do? It's all over and done with, and the last people you've got to blame are cowering in some hole somewhere."

Draco scratched his head. "Probably a hole with a grand ballroom and a view of the ocean, knowing my parents," he remarked.

Andray Rachels raised an eyebrow once more, very clearly and precisely. "Please," was all he said, but it shut Draco up all the same. He looked at Helicane again and nodded. "Go on."

Through a frown, Helicane obliged. "And then the unthinkable happens—one of the last men you can trust comes and tells you that, wonder of wonders, he's found the Malfoys' son! But wait, kid's gone. Found him again! No, he's gone. Wait, found him one more time! And then," Helicane's eyes were gleaming at the very recollection of success, "he gets chased right into London—right into the heart of things. And then _right into the Ministry_. Into the _break room_. More than a bit worse for the wear, but unmistakably himself. And what do you do, Granger?" He smirked at her. "Do you shake his hand and let him go free?" Any trace of a smile vanished again. Helicane seemed to be good at that. "Of _course_ not. You trap him as effectively as you can, hold him under your finger, keep him in sight, and you wait. You wait until he tells you—" Here he smiled at Draco. "—that he's staying with an idiot girl whose address is in the files."

Draco looked at him contemplatively. "You're a sneaky bastard," he decided thoughtfully. "And you're good at it."

Helicane snorted. "Only because you're such a damn fool, Malfoy."

Blithely, Draco smiled. "We can't all be geniuses."

Andray Rachels cleared his throat fastidiously, and everyone looked at him. "Giles," he said, "for the record, just how many people did you kill?"

Helicane sighed feelingly and started ticking them off on his fingers. The casualness of the action sent shivers rippling down Hermione's spine. "Well, the Johnsons and that other couple were really just to make it look like some loony out there was after harmless suburbanites. Worked, too—did you read the articles? Brilliant. All this serial killer paranoia. Filthy Muggles anyway; probably deserved it. And when my secretary started asking about getting her job back in the future, she had to go." He paused to consider, wiggling his six raised fingers. "I believe that's all… I could be wrong."

Hermione blanched a little at the fact that he could be _uncertain_ about such a thing.

Andray raised a sculpted eyebrow at Helicane and then turned to her. "Anything else you wish to know, now that he has reserved himself a comfortable little corner of Azkaban?"

She looked at Helicane. "Where's Leonine now?"

Giles Helicane's heavy features arranged themselves into an ironic smile. He folded his hands behind his head and leaned precariously back in his chair, completing the image of indifference. "Probably a Hell of a long way from here," he answered.

Then the chair slipped, and Helicane knocked his head solidly on the ground and lost consciousness.

Andray Rachels pursed his lips. "I'm always telling my nephews not to do that," he remarked. Then he stood, glanced at Draco and Hermione, and nodded to Helicane. "This session appears to be over," he informed them.

That, Hermione noted, would be their cue to exit.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Early Saturday morning, there was a knock at the door. Setting down the wonderfully un-scary newspaper, Hermione went to get it.

Fidgeting beyond the threshold was an utterly breathtaking, impossibly beautiful, entirely perfect woman.

It was Ilsa Engelman Weasley.

"Um, hi," Ilsa said haltingly, tentatively attempting to display a gorgeous smile full of straight, white teeth. She had the faintest hint of a German accent. "I was just wondering if you wanted to… you know… go out to lunch sometime. Talk things over."

Hermione looked closely. There was a little brown mole by the right corner of Ilsa's mouth, and a faint outline of sunglasses was detectable on her otherwise flawless tan. Her smile was genuine and hopeful, and her Caribbean-water-blue eyes were earnestly clear.

Hermione smiled back. "I would love that," she replied.

Ilsa's grin widened. "Great! Give me a call anytime—" She wrestled a scrap of paper out of a very ordinary-looking purse, jotted a number down on it, and offered it to Hermione, who took it. "That's my cell. Just let me know when you've got time, okay?"

"Sure," Hermione acceded happily. "Thanks."

With a chirpy parting salutation and a little wave, Ilsa started off down the hall again, and Hermione shut the door, still looking at the phone number. When she glanced up, she saw that Draco was lounging against the wall nearby, smiling his favorite I-know-something-you-want-to-know smile. Helplessly she smiled back.

Draco crossed over to her, cupped her face in both hands, and kissed her deeply, and then he went into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

"What was that for?" Hermione called after him dazedly, unable to erase the blissful grin plastered on her face.

"You," Draco responded calmly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

That afternoon, a letter arrived informing them that the Minister of Magic wished to see them right away. After a brief discussion—if you could call "Well, shall we go?" followed by "Yes, let's go" a discussion of any sort—Draco and Hermione went.

Pericles Tyrus had a craggy, rough sort of face, generously lined, with steel gray hair and a nose sharper than a knife. He looked like you could push him out of an airplane at 35,000 feet, and he would quite summarily survive the fall, get up, dust himself off, and then grind your face into the mud on the side of the runway when your plane came back down again. The drapes were drawn in his cramped office, casting the whole room in a shade of cloudy gray with the slightest hint of blue, and a wispy line of smoke trailed its way up from the end of the lit cigarette tucked between his lips.

"What I would like," he said, "is for someone to tell me who the Hell does the hiring around here. Where the _Hell_ is the Minister of Employment?"

Hermione was about ninety percent sure that it was a rhetorical question. Apparently Pericles Tyrus agreed, because he shifted his feet where they were propped up on his desk and looked at her.

"Your boss is gone."

"Yes," Hermione agreed helpfully.

"And you're the premiere witch of your age."

Hermione blushed. "Well—"

"She is," Draco supplied.

Pericles Tyrus leaned forward, grabbed a rather crude and somewhat ugly ashtray in the shape of a turtle from his desk, and tapped the end of his cigarette on it. "So you get his job."

Hermione stared. "What?" she said.

Pericles Tyrus raised an eyebrow that could have sliced cheese. "You get his job. You're probably more than qualified, and you bloody well can't do worse than he did."

Hermione continued to stare. "But, sir…"

Dismissively waving the hand wielding the cigarette—and consequently flinging ash to some shadowed corner—Tyrus snorted. "Come on, Granger. I read that speech you made about Muggles and whomsoever."

"That speech got me demoted," Hermione recalled.

An "_Ohhh_" came from Draco.

Pericles Tyrus snorted again. "Yeah, by your slimeball ex-boss. Probably didn't want anyone that smart so close to him." Tyrus took a tremendous puff on his cigarette, coughed, and sighed. "Damn these things. Would you believe it, I'm up to a pack a day. Make me smell like smoke, and they'll cut fifteen years off my life at the least." He pointed the smoldering end at Hermione. "But I damn well won't die before you take that bloody job, I can tell you that; so you'd better do it."

"Okay," Hermione conceded meekly.

Tyrus nodded and plugged the cigarette back in. "Good. Now, didn't he just lose his secretary?"

"Only then he hired me to replace her," Draco supplied.

"I was about to ask—who the Hell are you?"

Draco swallowed, and his Adam's apple bobbed like a yo-yo. "Draco Malfoy, sir."

Pericles Tyrus pursed his lips and blew a stream of smoke. "Thought you looked a little like Lucius." He glanced at Draco. "Your parents are in Spain, by the way. Barcelona, at the moment."

Draco's eyes lit up, and a wildly pleased smile spread slowly across his face like a gathering storm. Only a good storm—the kind that would pour cool, clean rain through the sweltering air and wash the dirt and the grime from the streets. "I thought it was France for sure," he said.

"Nope," Tyrus replied. "We've been in touch. Your dad and I went to school together. That damn Hat put me in Slytherin when I called it an uppity, self-important dishrag. That's what I get for being bloody honest, I guess." He sighed, more nostalgically than unhappily, and then considered the pair of them again. "All right, now you twitchy kids can get the Hell out of here."

"Yes, sir," Hermione consented readily, getting to her feet.

"One more thing, if you will, sir," Draco interjected. One eyebrow flicking up, Tyrus nodded for him to continue. "You might see about canceling the order for my nameplate," Draco told him, "or it'll say 'Ardoc Olyfam.'"

Tyrus blinked. He paused. Then he smirked. "Nice," he said. "_Nice_."

As the door to the Minister's cave of an office swung shut behind them, Draco turned to Hermione.

"I'm your secretary," he declared.

"I can call you my 'assistant' if it's less wounding to your masculinity," was what Hermione offered.

But what she was thinking was, _How deliciously scandalous._


	20. Epilogue: Nineteen Days Later

_Author's Note: Well, this is it—the last chapter, no ifs, ands, buts, or awww, pleeeeeases. If you're vaguely interested in the sources of all my odd and nigh on unnoticeable references, the bit after this is the Appendix/Bibliography, so eat your heart out. If you really just don't care, which I understand perfectly well, feel free to ignore it. So. The epilogue. The end. The last word. The not-a-bang-but-a-whimper. Thing is, when I originally wrote the climax, I vanquished both my villains and tied up all the loose ends. But, as you likely noticed, that's not the way it ended up. On one of many nights when I was trying to get to sleep, I got to thinking about this fic again—you can thank my insomnia for just about all the best parts of this story—and decided that I wanted to leave the back door unlocked. I've actually started a little bit of work on the sequel, but, as with this one, I want to have the whole thing written before I start posting. And there are two problems with that. First, summer is now long-since over. Second, how the HELL am I supposed to top THIS? Well, we'll probably see… next summer. Or maybe when I have a month off between semesters._

_That considered, I'll add a notice to the end of this one when the sequel's ready so that all my lovely subscribers will know when we're back in action._

_In the meantime, thank you, thank you, thank you for following me all this way and giving me a reason to keep writing._

_I'm really sad this is over, and at the same time really relieved. Trite and sappy as it sounds, I really hope to see you all again next time. You've been wonderful._

_Still and forever grammatically yours,_

_Tierfal_

* * *

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue: Nineteen Days Later

As far as Draco Malfoy was concerned, nineteen days later didn't seem far enough from the climax to be the resolution.

But at least nineteen days later was better than _28 Days Later_. No zombies, for one thing.

They were all sitting in the Weasley household, playing poker at the dining room table. Weasley had gone and gotten a job doing… something…, and he had a pretty nice place. It was airy, spacious, and sophisticated. While Draco attributed the last element entirely to Ilsa, given that Ron Weasley probably wouldn't know sophistication if it ran up and bit him in the ass (and then hung there, waiting, until he could get a good look at it), it was, all things considered, a very suitable Ermine Range. But the couches weren't orange, and Ilsa's white Persian cat had all its legs and both its ears, so it clearly wasn't _home_.

Things were going well for Draco Malfoy, and not just in the poker game in which he was smoking Ron, Harry, Ilsa, Ginny, _and_ Hermione. He'd recently gone to the manor and relocated the contents of his bedroom closet to a huge, disorderly pile on Hermione's floor. Then he had relocated it from there to Hermione's closet, at her insistence. He'd been quite prepared to leave it in a heap on the carpet; wrinkles shmrinkles. But he supposed it was a good thing that he'd submitted to her feminine tyranny of all things clothing and had reluctantly hung his things neatly, because the undeniable sexiness of him in his wrinkle-free shirt was distracting everyone from their cards.

Even Harry and Ron.

Especially Harry and Ron.

Draco smiled at the fan of cards in his hands. There had been many, many, many two-in-the-morning poker games in the Slytherin common room, and while Crabbe and Goyle hadn't tended to put up much of a fight, Blaise Zabini had been a formidable opponent at the best of times. Thinking about it, Draco probably had Blaise to thank for the fact that he was now in the process of robbing his friends blind.

For they were his friends now.

In the olden days, Ron "Satan" Weasley wouldn't have been able to afford this bout of indignity, but now, at his nice table, in the middle of his nice house, alongside his nice wife, he had little choice but to grit his teeth and bear it.

Draco smiled a bit wider. There was always something infinitely pleasing about driving people insane. And if the person in question was Ron Weasley, well… all the better.

When Draco had collected just about all the chips on the table and added them to his personal stash, the congregation moved to the cushy couches of the dim living room to nurse some drinks. "Drink" was a relative term in Draco's case, given that his beverage of choice was lemon-lime soda. He was still rather leery of champagne after the last incident. He figured that tended to happen when people tried to poison you. Besides, a little paranoia was healthy enough.

Well, not really.

Ginny raised her glass. "Hermione's promotion," she announced.

They all toasted.

"Draco's drastic reformation," Harry proposed next, grinning now.

"You flatter me," Draco responded airily. But he drank to it anyway.

"The Weasleys and their lovely home," Hermione added, indicating the halfway-to-cuddling couple on the couch opposite. Both Satan—that was, Ron—and Ilsa smiled delightedly and blushed a little. Hermione smiled right back.

Draco knew there was still a little something awry with her and Ron—that not all the hard feelings had been smoothed over. But Hermione was coping with it. She had accepted that not everything in life turned out the way you'd planned it, and that sometimes your intricate roadmap of what you wanted mysteriously disappeared or ripped down the middle or got trampled into the dust by someone wearing cleats, and that when that happened, you just had to get up, brush yourself off, and start walking in a direction that looked promising. She had accepted that Ron had chosen a path different from the one she would have chosen for him, and that his detour had forced her to find her own alternate route. She had accepted that she didn't really know where she would end up, and she had accepted that sometimes not knowing where the road led was okay. And sometimes it would lead somewhere you hadn't expected, somewhere you hadn't even dreamed of, that was better by far than anything you could have planned.

So that was all right.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

They walked back to the apartment, because Hermione wanted to get some fresh air, or so she said. Hermione was like that—acting like one little half-mile stroll would matter in the grand scheme of things. But then again, maybe if you got into the _habit_, those little half-mile strolls would add up like children near a petting zoo, who saw other children stroking the twitchy, half-mad goats and pigs and llamas, assumed that those other children were having fun, and soon flocked over to stroke the twitchy, half-mad animals themselves. Maybe Hermione was on to something.

And maybe Draco was on an acid trip, after an analogy like that.

After a few steps, Hermione took his hand in hers, and Draco's thoughts ceased to make much sense. There were a lot of little fragments that involved Cupids and bunnies and a wash of pink conversation hearts and cream-filled chocolates, but nothing coherent.

"Work tomorrow," Hermione remarked.

"Yeah," Draco agreed, not really processing the statement. If his brain had been fit to do much more than dither and frolic among daydreams of bouquets of flowers and beaches at sunset, he might have added that the weekend was coming up. At the moment, he was too busy coordinating the bouquet to match the sunset. It was a complicated procedure. There were a lot of colors to consider.

"Draco," Hermione said.

"Mm?"

"Don't your parents hate people like me?"

"What, bookworms?"

"_No_," she said, though she was smiling broadly. "Muggleborns."

Draco forced his mind, which was wandering through a field of daisies and considering whether it wanted to attempt a sprightly jig, to focus on the conversation.

"Well," he replied slowly, "I figure they'll probably have come to their senses like I have." _And if they haven't,_ he added mentally, _their senses will come to them, and their senses will be wielding a very large mallet to enforce the point._

"You think so?" Hermione sighed.

Draco squeezed her hand and reveled in the way her fingers tightened around his in response. "One thing the Malfoys aren't," he noted, "is stupid. And at this point, doing anything other than realizing how amazing you are would be incredibly stupid."

She smiled up at him, and Draco felt like he could jump up and fly the rest of the way home, flapping his arms in the air like a three-year-old convinced he would grow up to be an airplane. But doing that, of course, would have required releasing Hermione's hand, and that was not something that Draco was willing to do just yet.

Eventually, they made it back to the apartment complex, and they took the elevator up to the seventh floor. The elevator ride was no less worrying than it had been the first time, though there was something slightly endearing about the horrifying creaks and groans the car made in protest as it rose slowly towards its destination.

Down the hall they went, and up to the appropriate door. The corridor was quiet, and there was a calm about the place that Draco knew existed primarily within his mind. It certainly wasn't the turquoise-with-purple-lilacs wallpaper that was doing it; that much he could tell.

After he'd taken a shower, Draco settled with Hermione on her bed, and for a while they did nothing but lie there, wrapped up in each other's arms like the fabric of some complicated knot. Sparky hopped up onto the bed in that lopsided way he had and wedged himself into one of the tiny spaces between his human housemates. All was still and soft and warm, and everything was in place.

Draco realized that he had never been happier. And all because he had found what Hermione Granger's nameplate had guilelessly offered his fidgeting fingers:

_Her_ and _Me_.


	21. Appendix Bibliography

Appendix/Bibliography

"_Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." – Polonius, _Hamlet

"_Oh, matter and impertinency mixed,/Reason in madness!" – Edgar, _King Lear

"_Shakespeare geek? Me? Why, however did you guess?" – Tierfal, _Real Life

**NAMES**

Sparky – Sparky was my first cat. He started out as a four-legged cat, but he had some sort of cancer and had to have one of his legs amputated. (He did, however, retain both of his ears in all their entirety.) Real Sparky wasn't very friendly. I took some creative liberties.

Henry and Eleanor Johnson (in the newspaper article) – after Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine from _The Lion in Winter_. The movie's all right, I guess. But it was a live performance of it that blew me away. I saw it five times. (Did I mention I'm a GEEK?) Oh, Henry and Eleanor have a son named John, so "Johnson." _Geddit_?

Maximilian Venturous, Alexander Lace, and Xavier Weirwood – I just made those suckers up. I should write seamy romance novels, I know. I'm all cut out for it.

Giles Helicane – Helicanus is Pericles's advisor and assistant in _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_, a play Shakespeare wrote. (Well, wrote half of.) I'd come up with the name before I realized what an important part of the plot Helicane was going to be, or I wouldn't have christened him after a good guy. Well, Hell, it's more unexpected that way. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

Dionyza's Ice Cream Parlour – Dionyza is the queen of Tarsus in _Pericles_. She kills Lychorida (see below) and tries to kill Marina (also see below!). Yeah, I basically just picked a _Pericles_ character every time I needed a name for something… They should make an ad—_This is your brain. And this is your brain on laziness._

The Hersperides – in Greek mythology, three nymphs who take care of the tree that grows the golden apples that show up in all the other stories. Incidentally, they get referenced in—you guessed it—_Pericles_.

Lychorida Bolton – Lychorida is Princess Thaisa's nurse in _Pericles_; when Thaisa dies (temporarily, anyway… it's complicated…), she becomes Marina's nurse. Later Dionyza kills her off. "Bolton" was just an English name that sounded all right, though there is also a character named Boult in _Pericles_. That one was purely accidental, I swear.

Marina Irving Granger – As you may have gathered, Marina is a princess in _Pericles_. "Irving" is a Scottish name that means "green water," at least according to Behind the Surname.

Arturo Leonine – Leonine is the assassin Dionyza conscripts to kill Marina in _Pericles_. Are we sensing a bit of a pattern here?

Dynesy Cranot – an anagram of Sydney Carton, who inspired my very first fan fiction. (Don't read it. It's all Dickens-y.) Subtle nod; subtle nod.

Andray Rachels – an anagram of Charles Darnay, though I (evidently) switched the order of the names so it would make sense. When it rains _A Tale of Two Cities_ homage, it pours.

Tarsus – I thought it was pretty funny to name a restaurant after the kingdom in _Pericles_ that starts out in the middle of a famine. But then, I'm a dork.

Ilsa Engelman Weasley – "Ilsa" just sounded right. I picked a last name that matched.

Pericles Tyrus – I'm not even going to say it.

**STRANGE AND OBSCURE REFERENCES**

Chapter Title "Death of a Bookshelf" – _Death of a Salesman_ is a play by Arthur Miller. Y'know. I actually thought it was kind of a boring play. But I needed a chapter heading.

Chapter Title "Curioser and Curioser" – a reasonably well-known quote from _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, which is the trippiest book… ever.

"Well, shall we go?" "Yes, let's go." – from _Waiting for Godot_, by Samuel Beckett. I just thought it was too funny to miss. But, as we know, I'm a dork.

**MUSIC (SOME OF IT MENTIONED ONLY IN AUTHOR'S NOTES)**

"Toreador Song" (from _Carmen_) – Bizet; premiered 1875

"Ride of the Valkyries" (from _Die Walküre_) – Wagner; premiered 1870

"No One Lives Forever" – Oingo Boingo; 1985

"You Give Love a Bad Name" – Bon Jovi; 1986

"Rock and Roll All Nite" – Kiss; 1975

"Don't You (Forget About Me)" – Simple Minds; 1985

**ZOMBIE MOVIES**

"Night of the Living Dead" – 1968

"Resident Evil" – 2002

"28 Days Later" – 2002

**OTHER MOVIES**

"Jeepers Creepers" – 2001

**WORDS COINED**

Enigmaticness

Edibilities

Fantabulousiriffic

**IN CONCLUSION**

Thank you very much for humoring me. It means a lot. Though I think Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave…

Reviewers get imaginary candy and genuine gratitude. The esteemed list of them (at press, of course) goes as follows:

tennissoccerfreak; smartiesncoke; Kid At Work; fahzzyquill; Katie; Sordinmyhart; Take Your Pick; kogarocksmysocks; elspethana; Mufflebit; pluto; wingsrookie; S.Atkins; x.Kaley.x; SuperSheila; Wolf the Braineater; Eltea; peddyviolin; xEmmax; doornumberthree; saige; BlewStar101; beck; Krissy; Ninga Monkey - jellybeans; NikolaBel; nadia the demented one; em; TennesseeSweetheart; Eltea; Querida Goddess; Pink-Ichigo; doodlebug19; Rebell; insert-fancouple-username-here; Elithiel; ctc; suisei no mitsukai; Isadora120; Liz; duj; oliverwoodsgirl; ReineMauvaise; Psych3; InASwirlofSnow; Eviljellybean88; GirlEnigma; reader101; DariaM; iceprincess800; ColdPersianFusion; Intricacy; w1cked angel; Ehlonna; izzienkate; Michelle Pruitt; PeanutluvsHP; Akira M; bluenavydragon; Lemur76; magic2007; Alina; Aequalitas; 'loha; Kae-Lae; tawni butterfly; Pointe92; sleepie-kid; xpenguinx99; mahlee; vampassassin; XeclipseOnewmoonXtwilightO; izzaay; ToManyLetters; Slythersnake2000; JadedLadyoftheSpeculativeNight; fallenfromgrace17; BeInMyEyes; AlinaLotus; mha78; justamuggle; nikki1990.

You have all made me very happy. For someone who is used to getting the occasional desultory review from an average of two dedicated people… This is incredible and unprecedented. You guys handed me the jackpot. And for that I thank you one last time.

"Last" until the sequel, that is. Until then…

_(Tierfal takes an extremely ostentatious bow and exits stage right, at a run. Pieces of her costume fall off, and she sheepishly sidles back onstage to retrieve them before exiting for real this time.)_


	22. Sequel Time!

My darlings, it is here.

I will not bore you with the statistics of how many liters of blood and gallons of sweat and buckets of tears went into it, because—let's face it—math is lame, but it is here.

It is entitled_Enigmaticness Abounds_, and it encompasses an explosion, a fire, a highly-intoxicated Harry J. Potter, two different and uniquely chaotic Meet-the-Parents episodes, a few shameless make-out scenes, a lot of returning OCs, a couple new ones, and a _whole_ lot more.

And a crapload of semicolons. I promise. Scout's honor.


End file.
